


A Heap of Broken Images

by DiurnalDays, snarklyboojum



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Body Horror, Bucky Barnes-centric, Canon-Typical Violence, Discussion of Past Suicide Ideation, Embedded Images, Established Relationship, Fix-It of Sorts, Hydra-Typical Horribleness, Infinity Stones Shenanigans, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Temporary Character Death, The Tesseract (Marvel), Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 16:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16201388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiurnalDays/pseuds/DiurnalDays, https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarklyboojum/pseuds/snarklyboojum
Summary: Before you read this story gather some pillows and soft, safe things.  Let yourself fall into them.  Feel the spike of adrenaline, the momentary gasp in time as your body fights the fall and your toes try to grip the ground.  Feel the knowledge in your body that you’re going to hit something hard very soon.  The fear of knowing there’s nothing you can do about it.  That’s what it feels like to fall.Now imagine there is no soft, safe place.That’s what it feels like to be Bucky Barnes.





	A Heap of Broken Images

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my beta [Poe](https://smallreprieves.tumblr.com/). A better cheerleader/hand-holder does not exist. 
> 
> There’s special formatting and embedded images that may not appear correctly if you save this as an epub or mobi. Best to either read it online or download it as a pdf.
> 
> And how about that art, huh? I was very lucky to be paired with the extremely talented (and patient) [Diurnal Days](https://diurnaldaysart.tumblr.com/). Be sure to click through to [their masterpost](https://diurnaldaysart.tumblr.com/post/178771442160/a-heap-of-broken-images) to see their amazing art in full detail.
> 
> Head’s up to Future Readers: This fic was written with no information about the plot of Avengers 4, though I have a few suspicions. If the worst comes to pass feel free to read this and think happy thoughts.

Once  
The universe was new  
And light broke the **darkness**  
Into Six Singularities

The Lady asks you a **question**. You say **no**. 

(it’s a blessing, he thinks, not to remember – there are things in this world people aren’t meant to suffer through – feeling your atoms coalesce into soggy ash – watching the other half of your heart fade into nothing right before your eyes) (so much potential – so much pain – lost on the breeze) (he used to hate it, that cool agonizing burst of nothing behind his eyes – the absence only noticed for the pain it left behind – but now – now he almost wishes for it – an absolution of forgetfulness just one more time) 

“Wow.”

Bucky’s standing in the middle of the living room, staring into nothing, a vacant and awestruck expression on his face. He doesn’t seem to notice the tears that fall down his cheeks. 

“The stars are so beautiful here, Steve. Come and see.” Bucky doesn’t turn or look away from the spot on the wall, just holds his flesh hand back for Steve to take, the fingers trembling ever so slightly. His left hand is in a tight fist pressed against his chest; the dull metal segments shifting over gleaming gold.

It’s a little past four in the afternoon. Steve’s heart is beating so hard against his ribs he’s sure Bucky can feel the pulse of it when he twines their fingers together.

They attach the arm while he’s asleep.

At least, Bucky thinks they did. He doesn’t actually remember it, no matter how hard he tries or how much therapy he works through. The arm’s always just _there_ in his memories, shiny and silver and scarred. 

So, mercifully, he thinks he must have been asleep. He must have.

(please – please make it stop – i don’t want to hurt anymore – please)

(please)

Bucky’s different after the battle came and took him away from his little house next to the water. He’s never been what professionals would call _stable_ , necessarily. In fact, Steve’s come to believe stability is a highly relative concept and not something that could be applied to the majority of his closest friends. A little eccentric difficulty just kept things interesting

But this is something else.

Bucky’s always been a little quiet, even more so after everything Hydra put him through. He’d just seemed so composed about the strange and terrible direction their lives had taken that it was easy to forget how much he struggled with everything. That he felt something other than confusion and regret and the occasional moment of happiness that lit his face like the sunrise.

But after Thor took out Thanos and every last one of the “space dogs” was stacked in a burning pile next to the palace, after they’d had a moment to breathe and take stock… Bucky was different. Almost like something inside him had been – and Steve hates to even think of it like this but there’s no other word for it – something inside had been broken.

He has no idea what happened on the battlefield; Bucky’d been fine and fighting during the initial charge but Steve lost track of him after that. A head injury could account for some of the damage though no one saw him get hurt and Bucky swore up and down he was fine. (Steve was just as inclined to believe that now as Bucky had been when Steve said it back in the thirties. _Fine my ass._ ) He refused to let the doctors examine him, no matter how Steve begged or pleaded or casually brought it up in conversation for the billionth time.

Whatever it was, something had shaken loose the threads holding Bucky’s mind in place and left them strewn across the floor like dustbunnies to gather in the corners. And there’s not a goddamn thing Steve can do to help.

On good days it’s like there’s a wall of white noise around Bucky, a distracting hum on the edge of his hearing; just a step disconnected from what was happening around him. On bad days his thoughts skipped all over, jumping from one thing to the next, wonder and horror and – and fucking _madness_ swallowing him up and pulling him away. And on the worst days, the days that scare Steve more than he likes to think about…

(Bruises under Bucky’s eyes when Steve knows for a fact he slept soundly through the night. Running his hands over the rough bristles of new beard not ten minutes after watching him shave. Tears and laughter and sobs and too many languages all in one breath and _Jesus Christ when’d you get so big, Stevie?_ ) 

In the **dark** of night, with Bucky curled under his arm and muttering nonsense even in his sleep, the worst thoughts occur to Steve. He wonders if maybe Bucky was always like this. If maybe what broke in Bucky was the wall holding it all back. Or maybe he’d just finally run out of energy to hide it from Steve anymore.

He hates those thoughts more than he hates the bad days. They steal over him all the same. And in the spaces between them on the bed, where it should be quiet but isn’t, Steve lets himself worry and remember.

Combat moves so quickly for Steve – he wonders sometimes if it’s like this for everyone or if the serum changed him this way, too. It certainly didn’t feel like this when he was getting beat up on the regular back home. Fighting’s practically a reflex now, his body moving in a smooth curve of violence without any input from his mind. He just _knows_ what he has to do and the miracle in his muscles lets him do it.

But sometimes the action slows down, like a projector coming to a stop with a full reel of film on the screen. Every drop of blood and bullet flying past in excruciating Technicolor - Dorothy opening the door to find hell on her front step. It’s these moments that come back to Steve in the quiet of his tent at night, crystalline perfect, haunting his cursed memory in loop after loop after loop.

It’s a moment like that when Bucky jumps in front of a gun for him. 

The attack comes from nowhere and everywhere at once. They’re picking off troops fleeing the base Dernier’d just lit up in a ball of smoke and ash, half ambush half frontal assault, and Steve finds himself cornered by one of the armored behemoths Hydra seems to churn out by the dozen. 

It’s his fault; he’d been so hyper focused on the fight in front of him that he forgot to keep an eye out for what was happening behind. He only knows someone’s aiming at him when he hears Bucky call his name and something pushes him back hard on the shoulder. There’s a blast of blue light in Steve’s periphery and he _knows_. That’s it. That’s Bucky gone.

Jesus. Bucky’s gone. Steve’ll never be able to raise the shield in time to save him so Bucky’s _gone_ –

The blast hits them –

Bucky screams –

And screams –

And keeps screaming, the blue glow writhing and pulsing under his skin, shining out of his eyes and his ears and his screaming mouth like a beacon, like a torch. For one terrible moment Steve sees the veins in Bucky’s body burn so bright he has to look away or go blind.

There’s a blue spot in his vision when he opens his eyes, a floating specter jangling and superimposed over the **darkness** of the forest. He can’t hear anything over the high-pitched whine in his ears – he doesn’t know which of the others took out the gunman, can only assume the smoking lump on the ground is what’s left of him.

All he knows is that Bucky’s _still here_. Miraculously, somehow, still here.

He can see Gabe’s mouth moving when he grabs hold of Steve’s shoulder but he doesn’t have the capacity to focus on what he’s trying to say. His eyes are locked on Bucky, damn near bent over double at the waist and stumbling away from them, his shoulders and back heaving for air. The Commandos are hovering in a loose circle around him, different shades of devastated written large on their faces. 

Steve shakes his head hard a couple times and the whine fades into the crackling of the fire at his back and Gabe saying _easy_ over and over, like Steve’s a startled horse ready to bolt. He fumbles a step toward Bucky as the wind shifts overhead and stops him in his tracks.

Bucky’s talking. Mumbling to himself even as he wraps his arms around his middle like he’s trying to keep his guts on the inside. It sounds like gibberish to Steve, words and half-sentences smearing into each other in their hurry to get out.

It takes him a minute to realize the nonsense has resolved itself into numbers. Bucky’s counting down to something.

“Four, three, two…”

He straightens from his crouch and pulls his handgun in the same gesture, fires off three shots into the woods, one right over Falsworth’s head. Spins and shoots again, aim angled high over Steve’s back. It’s only when he turns Steve can see his eyes are clenched shut.

There’s a long silence, filled only with Dum Dum’s cursing and the Commandos heavy breathing. Then the slow slide of a body falling against brick and a corpse lands with a _thud_ not five feet to Steve’s left.

“ _Jesus fuck_ ,” Gabe shouts, jostling into Steve from behind.

Bucky lowers the gun. “Zero.”

Steve’s willing to bet they’ll find three other bodies in the woods if they look, hydra pins shining, all shot through with a single bullet the same as this one. An ambush in the making stopped before it properly began. The Commandos all stare at each other for a moment, mouths catching flies. They – they were almost – 

Gabe was right. _Jesus fuck_.

Bucky seems to have forgotten the gun in his hand. His head’s tilted, eyes open again but unfocused, like he’s listening to music playing somewhere just over the hill. Steve strains his newly recovered hearing but there’s nothing, just nothing. He doesn’t like how pale Bucky is, even with the red light of the burning base making hollows under his cheekbones. He could be hurt, _should_ be hurt, why were they all just standing there staring when Bucky needs help?

It’s like stumbling up out of a fog, making his body move forward. It’s only when he sees how much his hands are shaking that he realizes how shit scared he really is. 

“Bucky?” His voice is almost lost over the crackling of the fire but Bucky flinches anyway. Steve reaches out to hold him –

Bucky goes limp when Steve grabs him by the shoulders; his body loose and easy to move, like no one’s home to resist the pull. Steve shakes him a little, calls his name again. Bucky looks right through him at first, blinking blearily ( _like on the table like the table oh bucky no_ ) but then his eyes widen and lock onto Steve’s. He takes a deep shuddering breath… and screams. And screams. Like all the demons of hell are coming to get him. Like every nightmare Steve ever had condensed into a sound.

To his shame, Steve’s hands jerk away from Bucky’s shoulders like they were burned. He can’t stop himself from backing away.

Bucky collapses to the ground without Steve to support him, the monstrous terror in his voice breaking into little wheezing sobs. He curls into as tight a ball as he can until his forehead’s pushed into the churned up mud. His right hand grabs tight at his left shoulder.

Steve can’t look away, can barely breathe. The seam of Bucky’s coat sleeve starts to fray under his clawing hold, the stitches popping open one by one. He’s rocking back and forth, hitting his head on the ground harder with every sway. 

His broken voice is barely a whisper now, one word gasped out over and over and over. “Chair. Chair. Chair. _Chair. Chair. Chair. **Chair**._ ”

It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes _sense_.

In the end it’s Morita that picks up Steve’s shield and knocks Bucky over the head with it, the dull clang of metal against bone jolting through the trees. The first blow is enough to send Bucky to the ground; Jim has to hit him twice to actually knock him out.

(it’s just a stone – just a chunk of rock tossed away through the **darkness** of space)

(it’s the vessel that informs the purpose)

(scepter – hammer – orb – man – titan – whatever is strong enough to hold it)

(it’s just a stone)

He yells and snarls, wants to sink his teeth into every single one of them – every single Hydra fuck on the planet.

The colonel is less than impressed. “And say you do escape. Where will you go? It is winter, soldier. There is nothing but ice and snow for miles. You will freeze to death.”

Bucky leans as far forward as the restraints allow him to look the colonel straight in the eye. He puts as much hate and stubbornness into it as he can. “No, I won't.”

The colonel tilts his chin a little higher but allows the eye contact. A shiver runs unbidden down Bucky’s spine. “No. You wouldn’t die, would you? But you would freeze, little soldier; all things fall to General Snow eventually. Even you.” He unbuttons his jacket so he can lean down without wrinkling it. The scratch of his voice against Bucky’s ear joins the shiver and blossoms into full blown shakes. “And when you fall we will find you and begin again. And again. And again. As many times as it takes. You know the truth in this.” 

(the possibilities tunnel on forever, dragging him away with them – no don’t look, please – doesn’t want to – but he sees it, the endless snow, miles of ice and winter and cold cold – so very cold – hazy silhouettes blooming on the horizon, trees or people or something worse – over and over and over and _over_ – ice chips in his veins – an eternity of frozen freezing hell – the clean burning smell of bitter cold – taste of copper on his tongue – stars under the ice – red star – white star – no way out – no way out)

“We will _always_ find you. Cut off one head, little soldier. Cut off one head.”

There’s a glimmer.

At first he thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him, giving him flashes and bursts of color in the pitch black of his cell. Then he thinks: _well, maybe_. Maybe these are the hallucinations he’s been waiting for, hoping to succumb to, shivering in the cold. The pain spikes with every shift against the rough floor but if he stays still long enough it blurs into a haze at the edge of his thoughts. He can almost ignore it. Can almost sleep…

But there’s a glimmer. Pale blue. Soft. Like a baby’s blanket. Like water.

– like water –

And there’s something else. A man, screaming, red-faced – red face – **red** – red _soul_ –

No. Don’t feel that. Don’t look. Think of blue instead. Blue on the horizon, stretching as far as you can see, the line where sea becomes sky gentle and forgiving. Misleading. Falling hurts, but the landing – oh, the landing –

Steve. No. _Steve_.

Wind on the face, cold and clean, almost gentle breeze. Hair tickling forehead. Eyes open. Not long now.

The floor burns out from under Bucky’s feet. He’s falling – falling in reverse – leaving the plane behind – no – _steve is falling_ – no – wait – come back –

The glimmer is gone. He’s alone on the floor of his cell. Reaching, reaching for something to hold onto. A hand, reaching. 

 

 

Ice is waiting for them both.

The Lady asks you a **question**.

You say **no**.

Bucky can see the smoke rising from the field through the window though the fire’s mostly out by now. There will be nothing left of Thanos’s forces save what Shuri hid away in contained freezers for her teams to study later. All that death and pain and now all there is to remember it by is the smell of ash on the wind.

T’Challa’s opened up a corner of his palace to everyone without a proper home to return to – aliens and foreigners alike. Bucky supposes he and Steve could’ve retreated to the goatherder’s hut but there was no telling what condition that area was in; he’s sure the goats weathered it just fine regardless. Damn things probably jumped up a tree and peed all over a space dog in revenge. God knows they’ve done it to Bucky often enough. Besides, Steve… didn’t look like he was ready to leave his friends yet.

The initial thrill of survival seems to have finally worn off for most of the others and the inevitable crash of avoided disaster is finally starting to sink in. He’s pretty sure Colonel Rhodes fell asleep standing up in his suit. The vicious little space raccoon is holding court on top of the bar and waving a bottle of beer around as he recounts the events that got him planetside, though Bucky’s pretty sure it’s mostly bullshit. There’s no way they tried to squeegee Thor off their ship’s windshield.

Thor himself is a presence that’s hard to ignore, too. He’s certainly the man of the hour, since it was his attack that took Thanos down. And he certainly seems pleased to see everyone hardy and whole after the battle. But there’s a shadow to his smile that’s bothering Bucky for some reason. The king should be happy, and yet… he’s still wearing his armor, as if he can’t quite believe the fight is over.

Bucky knows the feeling. He hovers around the edge of the room and watches the others gravitate around the food the Wakandans have managed to pull together among all the other duties that fall to them now. Things get a little more quiet, the hum of conversation a pleasant _echo_ in the background of Bucky’s thoughts.

Thor’s armor groans as he moves – a deliberate kindness on his part, since Bucky knows for a fact that the leather and metal doesn’t make a sound unless Thor wants it to. He appreciates it all the same; he’s not sure his nerves can take being startled by a huge Asgardian right now. It’s also clearly a request to approach the space Bucky’s carved out for himself on the edge of the room. He nods, subtly, and the Thor plops down onto the low couch next to him with a smile. He settles close enough that their conversation won’t be overheard by anyone else but far enough away so they’re sure to not accidentally touch each other. Bucky appreciates that, too. 

Thor leans his axe against the arm of the couch, within hand’s reach, and sips from an earthen mug. The hoppy, honey smell of the liquor inside makes Bucky thirsty. They sit in silence for awhile, watching the others mingle and relax. Bucky almost envies them. He can feel Thor carefully not-looking at him and doesn’t like it, not at all. Its weird how he feels around Thor, like the king is lightning in a bottle in the most literal sense; the hairs on Bucky’s arm rise up at his proximity. 

The lightning is _there_ , Bucky can see it, arcing off through the possibilities of the universe. Each branch spiraling and sparking off of another, thousands of volts cutting a swathe through space. And yet. Yet what should be a billion different ~~paths~~ branching off from his incredibly long life is instead one solid line, a single thread spooling on forever, every little movement bumping it along to one possible place. The end is closer now than it’s ever been before

__

_the king smiles_  
_through the blood_  
_dripping down_  
_well-worn lines to his chin_

  
but not yet. Not yet.  


Bucky shivers off the _echo_ of a thousand thousand years, cracking his neck and adjusting the weight of the arm on his shoulder. 

Thor’s been watching him. Bucky doesn’t like how he’s looking at him now; like he knows Bucky’s whole history at a glance and has yet to make a decision about it. 

Thor, Bucky thinks, is smarter than anyone gives him credit for.

He nods towards where Bucky’s still twitching along his left side. “It’s fine work, that. Familiar, too. If I didn’t know better I’d say it was made in Nidavellir by Eitri himself.” His eyes trace the seam where metal meets flesh, hidden under the shoulder of Bucky’s tactical jacket. There’s no way he can see the bit of silver left at the base. Bucky locks his eyes across the room and refuses the urge to cover the scar. 

Thor sighs and follows Bucky’s gaze. He gestures with the hand holding the mug to where Bruce is making small talk with T’Challa and awkwardly avoiding eye contact with Natasha. Bruce notices him looking and smiles, nodding his head in cheerful greeting. It’s somehow the purest thing Bucky’s seen all day.

Thor smiles back though Bucky can tell it’s tinged a little with melancholy. “He tries to be a good man, that one, but he still seems confused about what a good man actually is.” He pitches his naturally loud voice so that only Bucky can hear; another kindness, and a surprising one at that. “Goodness is not the same as timidity. Being worthy to carry our strengths often means accepting our weaknesses. Don’t you agree?”

Bucky clenches his jaw.

“The Hulk within him knows his **darkness**. Is one with it. He is neither good nor bad; he simply is. There’s a beauty in that, I suppose, one I’d like to know myself one day. Still, I worry Banner will never truly be happy until he learns to embrace those parts of himself as his other has done.”

Bucky watches Doctor Banner sip from a champagne flute of sparkling water and cut fruit. If Thor is lightning… If Thor’s lightning, then Banner is _thunder_ , unseen rumbles shuddering through the walls, shaking things up.

Or maybe – maybe Bruce is – 

Bucky can _see_ it in him; can see the earthquake shock of his thoughts. The sly glances, the tongue in cheek reminders of exactly how dangerous he can be. How in the right circumstances he can clear a room in seconds by tensing his jaw and cracking his knuckles one-handed. (boring, bored, better things to do) Sometimes he walks with his head tilted back and his shoulders square, nostrils flaring in anger at nothing in particular. _Crazy eyes_ , Bucky used to call it, back when he’d see the same swagger creep over Steve’s bony flesh.

The Hulk. Maybe just the Hulk looking out through Banner’s body? But no – no, not – not two, not one. It’s. Everything _b l u r r s_ when he thinks about it too hard. It’s confusing. He’s confused. Two is one is two? 

He sees Thor nod out of the corner of his eye, though Bucky hopes – knows – hopes he didn’t say any of that out loud. Thor shrugs and takes a sip from his cup. “What do I know of goodness, anyway? Banner has plenty of time to learn what he needs to, though I hope it doesn’t take too long to come to terms with his warrior self. I’ve grown to count them both as friends.”

“Time is meaningless.” Bucky’s not sure why he says it or even what he means. His voice is a little rough, throat oddly sore. Has he gone too long without speaking?

Thor takes the non sequitur in stride. “Perhaps, save to those who are caught in it. Some of us have more time than others, though, don’t we?” He gives Bucky another knowing look, eyes flickering down to Bucky’s left hand. It clenches into a fist without Bucky consciously telling it to do so. Thor gives him a moment to breathe and relax before speaking again. “Mortality is a strange thing. Humans struggle through the lifespan of a mayfly and propel themselves to amazing things. And yet, ageless Titans can be driven mad through similar hardships, so perhaps there’s no wisdom to be found anywhere.” His face is sad and serious when he looks at Bucky, whose mouth has fallen open entirely without his permission. “You thought I didn’t know? I can see it, friend Bucky, though not as clearly as others. I know what you did.” 

Bucky’s heart is in his throat. He can’t turn his head to look at Thor without risking giving everything away. So, as surely as a needle points north on a magnet, his attention’s drawn across the room to Steve, who’s grinning at some comment from one of the border tribe. He gleams in the soft light filtering through the windows behind him. Like fire in the sky, painting Steve’s pale face in color. 

The knot of tension growing between Bucky’s shoulders relaxes, slowly, slowly. Steve is happy in the world. It’s all right. Everything’s all right. 

Like Banner had before him, Steve senses Bucky’s eyes on him and looks over, eyebrow raised and head tilted in their signal for _doing okay?_ Bucky’s lips twitch into a smile and he nods ( _roger rogers_ ) rubbing carefully at the corner of his eye where moisture’s starting to gather. Steve frowns but turns back to the Wakandan’s question. 

All right.

Thor is cradling his mug in both hands, a sad softness in his eyes. “They burn so very brightly, don’t they? One wonders what fuels the fire.”

_flash flash strike  
crackle crack **BOOM**_

“Do you know, I am constantly amazed at your people’s ability to change the extraordinary.”

Bucky clenches his jaw and his fists, grounding himself in his body on the couch in the room surrounded by people he’d like to call friends. He clears his scratchy throat. “Don’t you mean _be changed by_?” 

Thor squints at him. “No. I don’t think so.” The mug creaks in his grip. “It is hard to say whether you have been blessed or cursed, my friend. Time – whether it is real or not – will tell.” He pauses, breathes through some great emotion. Bucky’s head is growing fuzzy again. “I would like to thank you. What you have given me, given us _all_ … It is a gift. The sacrifice you’ve made –”

Bucky shakes his head sharply, the **static** inside cutting off with a _snap_. 

Thor nods and wipes his eyes, draining the last dregs of his already empty cup. He stares into the bottom of it for a long time. “Forgetfulness can be a kindness. But I confess I’m glad I’ve somehow escaped it. I prefer to remember my misdeeds, real or imagined. How else will I grow into the king my people deserve? How else will I know to cherish every moment I have with them?”

A tear slips down the lines of his cheek into the curve of his smile. He sets the mug aside and picks up Stormbreaker from where it was resting quietly, waiting. It shivers with a metallic hum in his hands. 

He stands, adjust his cape a little – “Hold this for me, would you?” – and drops the axe into Bucky’s lap, ridiculously close to parts of his anatomy Bucky’s grown quiet fond of over the last few years. Bucky lifts it carefully out of his crotch and glares at Thor.

A weaker man would have crumbled under the look. Thor simply looks at him holding the axe and grins, bright and uncompromisingly cheerful, then bows slightly in farewell. He immediately inserts himself in a conversation on the other side of the room, squeezing into the tiny space between his brother and the arm of the sofa he’s awkwardly perched on. Loki frowns in distaste and scoots begrudgingly closer to Natasha – it’s either that or have Thor actually sit on him. Despite scowling at Thor like he’s completely lost his mind, Bucky can’t help but notice Loki allows him to stretch an arm around his shoulders and pull him just a little closer. Natasha pointedly ignores them both and doesn’t move an inch.

Bucky, on the other hand, is not so pleased with being named an axe’s babysitter. It’s not like Wakanda isn’t a safe place and they’d passed by perfectly good weapons lockers on the way here. And now that he’s holding it, Stormbreaker’s handle has a weird texture…

" _Ugh!_ Is this an _arm_? Groot, what the hell?" 

Groot doesn’t even bother glancing up from his game system. “I am groot.”

“Maybe, but you don’t just _give someone your arm_ , I don’t care how much he needed it. And don’t just hand it to the _goddamn amputee_ in the room without warning. I mean. Thor? Are you listening? Jesus.”

It even looks like it’s the fucking left one, too. Just. What the fuck, Universe? He really didn’t need to see that on top of everything else that’s fucking happened today.

Bucky shoves the axe between the couch cushions and storms over to the wet bar. He needs a nap and a drink, and not necessarily in that order.

They attach the arm while the subject’s awake.

There is some argument about this; first, they don’t actually know what the arm will do to it, if anything. The arm’s remained a great lump of unresponsive metal through all their tests, though they haven’t been able to actually cut into it so all their findings are based on the exposed circuitry around the broken piece by the shoulder. There’s a chance their results are wrong and the arm is truly dead after all.

Second, the subject is too valuable a resource to endanger in such a potentially needless way. They need it for blood and parts if nothing else. 

“Doctor Zola would agree with me,” the head technician protests. The arm sits waiting on a sterile tray, shined up until it gleamed, and the subject is secured in position. All that awaits is his order. “The arm was buried in a graveyard in Norway for who knows how long. We never would have even found it in the first place if the Red Skull hadn’t been chasing his own tail looking for the tesseract.”

The colonel raises his eyebrow. “Yes. Remind me: how _did_ we find it, Doctor?”

“It – The arm emits a similar radiation as the tesseract did. Lower levels, of course, but enough to be noticeable. Local legends corresponded our readings that there was something hidden there, so we dug up the grounds searching for it.” 

“Mmm. I wonder how it is that you know so much about the tesseract and Doctor Zola’s findings when you were not part of his research team?”

“Well, I –”

“Arnim Zola did not have a team, for research or otherwise. He was far too paranoid for that; something he and the Skull had in common. I can only assume that you came by the good doctor’s research after he was lost to the Americans, eh?”

“I…”

“Normally I would applaud your nerve in presenting yourself as more important than you are. It’s why we didn’t shoot you when you defected to our cause after the great Valkyrie’s failure. But your time of having opinions is over. We have in our possession the arm of a superior being of unknown origin and a soldier who is missing one of his own. Fate has provided, doctor. _Begin the procedure_.” The colonel gestures to where the team’s waiting and they carefully maneuver the arm off of the tray. It takes two of them to carry the weight. 

The subject struggles weakly on the table; the straps are more than enough to hold it down, stretched to the end of its endurance as it is. The technicians are more grateful for the bite guard – the subject’s constant muttering was enough to give them all headaches sometimes. Its breathing is wet and loud around the mouthpiece. 

Its wide and dilated eyes are a brilliant blue in the overhead light, an eerie contrast to its pale clammy skin. 

– eyes a brilliant blue in the overhead light –

– and the arm comes to life, segments clicking together, fingers clenching into a fist. It twitches out of the technicians’ startled grasp to thunk heavily onto the table next to the subject, who’s trying in vain to move as far away from it as possible. The exposed wires in the shoulder – ragged and torn, ripped from something mighty before any of their grandparents were born – wave through the air like tiny tendrils looking for something to latch onto. They stretch toward the subject’s stump.

The colonel’s teeth gleam as he smiles. “You said it yourself, Doctor. The radiation is the same as the tesseract’s. Isn’t it amazing?”

The tendrils burrow under the skin, digging down into the muscle and beyond. The subject screams, once, muffled and terrible, before subsiding into twitching silence. The technicians scramble for their instruments to track the tendrils progression through the subject’s body. A lacework of metal appears on the screens, weaving between nerves and tissue. The spine disappears completely, readings off the charts; bone replaced with the same unknown metal the arm is made of.

They watch as the tendrils probe inside the skull. Their equipment isn’t sensitive enough to perceive what happens next.

The subject thrashes as much as the straps allow, its atrophied muscles bulging. The arm’s segments ripple like water, contracting and shifting until it’s the same size as the flesh arm on the right. The subject’s body heaves once more, tensing as though shocked, and falls still. Its eyes have dulled to a chilly gray. The bite guard slips from its mouth, bitten cleanly in two.

The head technician inches closer. “Soldier?”

“Ready to comply.”

The arm jerks up fast, catching the technician around the throat. Everyone starts shouting and dropping expensive equipment. 

The colonel sighs and stuns the subject with one of the useless guards’ batons until it succumbs to unconsciousness. The technician’s neck is little more than pulp when they finally pry the hand free.

Ah, well. Two problems solved and many more to discover. “It appears there is still some fine tuning to do. Clean this up and get back to work.”

The cube – glowing blue light, like fireworks at night on the boardwalk, like fire in the sky, painting Steve’s pale face in color – is placed carefully, carefully into the machine.

The screams begin.

In New York a god of mischief and unbrotherly thoughts opens a portal for an army.

In Washington a soldier wakes inside the ice and screams and screams and screams. 

 

 

(resurrection is painful – you feel it in your soul)

The Lady asks you a **question**.

You say **no**.

The little hut is **dark** , the normal sounds of sheep and children and sun exchanged for the buzz of insects in the trees outside. Bucky angles the Kimoyo beads Shuri gave him against the pillow so he can almost believe Steve’s lying next to him.

“It’s an honor just to be allowed here, honestly,” he says with a sigh. “I got to walk around the capital a little this morning. Steve, it’s _amazing_. Remember when they gave us that security tour? It’s like that but all over. Everyone has access to everything, all the technology they could want. It’s so colorful. There’s this amazing market where all the venders gather and I swear it’s just like haggling with Mr. Correy over apples back in the thirties, except this stuff ain’t full of worms. Oh! And they have actually _force fields_ around all these cultural heritage sites, like places where important things happened or are important to individual tribes or something, to keep them safe from the elements. And _Shuri’s lab_ , Steve, oh my god. Howard would shit himself if he saw some of the things she gets up to.”

“Well, to be fair to Howard he was in his prime before they invented the internet, so I feel like he’d shit himself over email.”

Bucky’s laugh is softer now, quieter than the wild thing it used to be when they were kids. But it feels nice to fall under the urge again and let his body do what it wants. For a long time he couldn’t have that. He lets the guilty twinge of feeling that was thinking about Howard slide down his back and down to his feet, pulling all the negative thoughts with it. He _visualizes_ it shooting from his toes like light, leaving him warm and safe and clean.

He didn’t think it would work when they first suggested he try them, but the doctors were right – these little tricks and things actually do help settle his mind. They don’t do anything for the static hissing just behind his eyes but now he can calm down enough to see past it.

He opens his eyes to Steve’s worried frown projected in 4D holographic glow and has to laugh again. “Seriously, Steve. Wakanda may not be perfect, but it’s as close to heaven as I’m likely to get.”

Steve’s frown kicks up a notch to include the furrow Bucky swears once made a SSR underling cry. Bucky can feel a conversation he doesn’t want to have looming around the corner so he finally stops resisting the yawn that’s been building for the last five minutes.

As predicted, Steve’s frown shifts from Angry Mongoose to Repentant Labrador. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry, I forgot about the time difference. It’s gotta be past midnight there. I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, you need your sleep. You’re supposed to be recovering, remember? I shouldn’t have called you in the first place.”

And just like that his plan backfires. “It’s all right, Stevie, really. I could get all the sleep I want to and it won’t fix the kind of tired I am.”

“Don’t call me, Stevie, asshole. You know I hate that.”

“Then don’t call me asshole, asshole.” Bucky shifts on the mattress so the shoulderwrap’s not pulling so hard against his neck. “Besides I know you love it. Admit it.”

“I’ll admit no such thing.” Steve’s face softens into the look Bucky likes best: soft around the edges with a hint of a smile. “Seriously, Bucky. You need to sleep.”

“I haven’t slept a night all the way through in eighty years. Rather be talking to you anyway.” Bucky sighs and lets his eyes drift a little more closed. “I like it here, Stevie, I really do. If I’m going to get better – if there’s a better to _be_ then I think it’s happening here. The only thing missing is you.”

Steve makes a little hurt sound and his hand hovers in the air, like he’d touch Bucky’s cheek if he was more substantial than light and shadow. “I miss you, too. You know I’d be there if I could.”

“I know. Good thing we have these beads, huh?” 

“Sure. I have to settle for a knockoff iPhone Natasha bought in Greece but, whatever, you keep living the dream.” Bucky snorts into his pillow. “I want you to use your fancy phone beads to call me any time you want to, you hear? Day or night, I don’t care.”

“But Steve, what if _you’re_ the one sleeping?” He pitches his voice to mimic the high-pitched lilt of Sarah Rogers. “You need your rest, too, young man.”

“No one likes a smart ass. I mean it.”

Bucky’s actually getting pretty sleepy now, miracle of miracles. Steve’s face was a soft blue blur through his eyelashes, as it often was in his dreams. “Night, Steve. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Bucky. I’ll be home soon.”

(it’s just a stone)

The children of Wakanda ask him to tell them their fortunes.

The little ones giggle and stare and generally treat him like an amusing houseplant that’s learned to do a trick. He’s not sure why they believe some half-crazy foreigner squatting in their parents’ guest hut had the magic of a priest in his veins, but somehow they do. He assumes Shuri started the rumor for some reason, little troll that she is. 

The older kids are coolly skeptical about the large, supposedly mystical white man in their midst. They laugh at his city boy ways, teach him how to keep their flock of goats from wandering off, and braid his hair when it grows long enough to hang in his eyes.

They’re kind to him no matter what they believe. So he tells them their fortunes and makes sure that each one ends as happily as he can.

Of course, he could be lying.

He could be lying about any of it. All of it. Every word out of his mouth made just believable enough to send the fuckers chasing their own tails in excitement. 

And he did, at first. Until they caught him at it.

If there’s one thing all of Hydra’s heads have in common, it’s that they did not tolerate a lack of cooperation in their weapons. And that they know how to secure that cooperation very well. Needles and drugs and pain and soft words and _tell us what you know_ – it’s not his fault he tells them. 

It’s not.

barnes james buchanan sergeant 32557038  
barnes james buchanan sergeant 32557038  
barnes james buchanan sergeant 32557038  
barnes james buchanan sergeant 32557038  
barnes james buchanan sergeant 32557038  
barnes james buchanan s e r g e a n t 3 2 5 5 7 0 3 8  
b a r n e s james b u c h a n a n s e r g e a n t 3 2 5 5 7  
b a r n e s j a m e s b u c h a n a n s e  
b a r n e s j a  
b a r n e s  
b a r n e s  
b  
b  
b

 

 

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

The soldier learns that it’s easiest to tell people what they want to hear.

His handlers want the truth. They ask for him to shift through a billion different potentials for the one that rings the clearest. And then they change something and the whole thing crashes down around his ears and he has to do it all over again.

He thinks he used to be better. Used to plan and plot and pluck the strings of the world to make it how it should be. But now.

Now he’s not very good at it. When the soldier fails he is reset. He knows the consequence of failure deep in the metal of his bones. _Serve. Serve._

The truth requires… flexibility. The handlers speak over his head about _the observer effect_ and _butterflies flapping their wings_ and _proper interpretation of data_ , but he knows it’s simpler than that.

When he can, he tells them the truths they want to hear. When he can’t, he tells them the truths _he_ wants to hear.

No one ever wants to listen to Bucky about the things that matter. Oh, they’ll follow orders all right; shouted in a bloody trench or planned carefully with Steve at his side, his men don’t hesitate to do as they’re told. And he can still sweet talk a lady onto the dance floor, certain Agent exceptions notwithstanding. But when it’s _important_ , when he needs to talk about things that actually _meant_ something, the world may as well have been deaf.

It’s not like anyone actually asks, either. When he tells them anyway they don’t like what he has to say. He can’t blame them, really; no one wants to hear the next bullet flying over the field has their name on it, or that it’ll ricochet off some other poor bastard’s helmet straight into their neck. He tells himself that plotting the trajectory isn’t the same as firing the gun but by the time the bullet’s already in the air it’s too late to warn them to duck.

He tries to tell the Howlies only once about the lights and the ~~paths~~ and the _angles_ of the world but the words come out all sideways. He thinks it’s the cold that’s confusing him, or maybe the backwater slush Dum Dum passed around to ward off the chill of the mountain they were camped out on. Either way the others don’t say anything back; they just look at him funny, all frowning-like, and glance nervously to where Steve’s scouting up ahead. Morita pushes the flask back into his hand and that’s that. 

He thinks if he sees that same expression on Steve’s face he might actually die. So Bucky doesn’t tell him, or anyone else. He definitely doesn’t report to command, even though he really probably should. 

Of course, there’s a lot he doesn’t tell Steve. And he suspects there’s even more Steve doesn’t tell him. But that’s all right, too. The important stuff, the _really_ important stuff, Steve already knows. They’ve always had an understanding between them. Dance partners or not.

Some secrets are only secrets because no one wants to hear them. And some secrets are shared. 

 

(some secrets aren’t secret at all)

Bucky’s awake when he falls, the whole way down.

He stops screaming when he loses sight of Steve clinging like an ant to the side of the train. Mostly because the freezing wind rushing past him steals his breath, but… fuck, what’s the point? What’s the point of anything if it’s going to end in this? 

He picks up speed as he descends, plummeting. The sick feeling of weightlessness churning up in his insides is eerily familiar. So familiar. 

He thinks he started falling a long time before his feet even left the ground.

He takes one last desperate breath –

impact 

sharp

white 

cold

 

**dark**

 

 

(it’s not the fall that kills you – it’s the sudden _stop_ at the bottom)

The Lady asks you a **question**.

You say **no**.

When the order comes down for him to accompany the Secretary to collect their weapon before the mission, the commander had been expecting the guards and the guns, even the flurry of scientists hooking things into the asset or drawing things out of him. But he hadn’t been expecting, well, _this_.

“He’s the goddamn _Winter Soldier_. I’ve seen him tear targets apart with his bare hands. Why is he just sitting there?”

“He only tore them apart because somebody told him to, didn’t he? What you’re looking at is decades of the finest training money can buy. And rule number one is always _don’t bite the hand that feeds you_.” The scientist smirks and shakes the bag of chips in his hands, shuffling through the crumbs for a whole one. “Figuratively speaking, anyway.”

“That’s disgusting. They let you eat in here?”

“They let me do what I want, champ. Perks of being the boss. It’s not like it’s a sterile room or anything.” He snags one and shoves the whole thing in his mouth. “Think of using the soldier like reading a barometer.”

And of course the asshole doesn’t bother to swallow before he speaks. “A what?”

“A barom– it’s a machine that uses air pressure to predict the weather.” 

“I know what a barometer is. I just couldn’t hear you over all the goddamn crunching.”

“Well, pardon me all to hell, neck muscle. You want to hear this or not? You’re not going to last long in this organization if you don’t have an understanding of how this shit works.”

The commander’s heard the turnover rate for the science teams is even higher than it is for his own Strike team, which is certainly saying something – the missions they go on aren’t exactly _run of the mill_. But he clenches his jaw and concentrates on resisting shoving his baton between this geek’s eyes and lighting it up. 

The scientist must take his slow exhale for submission because he starts talking again, daring to crunch another Dorito like it isn’t _this close_ to being his last fucking meal. “A good barometer is expensive and difficult to read but if you have the knack for it they’re pretty reliable. They can’t tell you exactly where the lightning’s going to hit but they can measure the conditions around the strike, which means you can recognize when it’s going to happen again.”

 _And Hydra’s strong enough to tell the storm where to strike._ “Makes sense. But don’t they use Doppler and shit now?”

The geek sighs like the commander was an even bigger idiot that he’d already assumed. “Yes. And so do we.” He wheels his chair back a little to gesture at the banks of computers buzzing away behind them. “We record everything the asset says. Every sneeze, every twitch, every time he scratches his ass there’s an intern with a compass taking down notes. All the data’s compiled and run through the system before it even comes close to the Algorithm. After that it’s a cake walk to figure out what we need to know.”

“I didn’t know any of this. I’ve been running ops with the asset for ten months; how is this the first I’ve heard of it?”

“I guess congratulations are in order. Welcome to the inner circle, neck muscle. Chip?”

The commander sneers at the bag. “If the Winter Soldier can _predict the fucking future_ then why the hell are they sending him out in the field in the first place? Why not stud him out and run his brain until we map the next ten decades or something?”

“The asset is never wrong. And he never misses a target.”

They stare across the room to where the asset is ignoring the Secretary’s crooning drone. He stares straight ahead, absent in every way except for the heaviness of his body in the chair. This fresh out of cryo he’s still shiny with whatever chemicals they pump in to keep him cold and unresponsive. The arm gleams in the overhead light. He thinks about those limp muscles bunching, whipping into movement faster than the eye could follow - the unstoppable, brutal force of the asset with a mission in his sights. 

His mouth waters.

The scientist swivels in his chair, sighing. “Besides, it’s not an exact science. Just because he’s never wrong doesn’t mean he’s _stable_. The asset’s crazy as a fucking loon. Why do you think they stopped letting him plan his own missions?”

The commander crosses his arms and widens his stance. A thought occurs to him among all the twisty turning ones the asset always produces in him. “What keeps him from lying to us?”

“A mix of behavioral conditioning and medication. The Russians did our work for us on that one.”

The slap _echoes_ loudly across the vault. A few of the scientists glance over at where the Secretary’s withdrawing his hand but most don’t look up from their screens. The guards don’t so much as flinch; well-trained, the commander is pleased to see.

“Of course, sometimes the easiest way to find out if it’s raining is to stick your head out the window.” The scientist wheels back to his station, chip bag momentarily forgotten in his lap - the asset’s mumbling under his breath now, too low to properly make out the words. He types a few commands into the keyboard and turns to a woman waiting nearby holding a tablet. “Make a note to run program nineteen again. This damn bug will be the death of me; I thought we finally conditioned him to speak clearly last time.”

Greasy strands of hair fall away from the asset’s face as he tilts his head up. His eyes focus – sharp in a way they usually only are when there’s a gun in his hand – and scan across the room until they lock onto the commander’s. In all the training and the missions and the downtime they’ve had together he can’t remember making eye contact with the asset before. Were they always that electric blue or did the fluorescents just shade the gray that way?

A corner of the asset’s mouth twitches. The room’s gone silent. He laughs, rusty and croaking. “How about a little fire, Scarecrow?” 

A shiver runs across the back of the commander’s neck. He shuts down on it hard before it can spread.

The Secretary is watching him, calculating, a pleased look in his eyes. He snaps out a command – a harsh word in Russian the commander learned two months into this assignment – and the asset’s jaw clamps shut. The giggles continue anyway, little snorts huffed through his nose. He hasn’t blinked.

“That’s. No. That shouldn’t be…” The scientist is leaving nacho cheese fingerprints all over the keyboard as he types and honestly that’s more disturbing than the fucking asset. “He shouldn’t be capable of making a reference like that. They operated on that part of his brain in ’82.”

“Oh? I’d hate for someone not to be doing their job properly.” The Secretary’s wiping cryo fluid off his hand with the fancy handkerchief from the pocket of his suit. It’s threatening in a way the commander could never pull off and has to grudgingly admire; he’s got about twenty pounds too much muscle to be so unassuming. 

The scientist pales and sticks a pen in his mouth, biting down hard as he types, working his teeth into the grooves already in the plastic.

The Secretary pauses to sweep his eyes along the trail of crumbs across the floor – the pen falls out of the scientist’s mouth and rolls under a monitor – and replaces the handkerchief, careful to make the corners just left of pristine. “Get what you can out of that and have it ready by 1500. We are on the clock, doctor.”

“Yes, sir. If we wipe him right away we should have enough time to reinstall the codes and update his kit for the mission.” 

The Secretary doesn’t answer. _Serves the little geek right_ , the commander thinks, falling into step behind the Secretary as a guard opens the door. He can still feel the asset’s eyes on the back of his head, like a firm hand has grabbed his awareness by the short hairs and won’t let go. 

The Chair rolls into motion behind them, clanging into place around the asset’s head. He’s still giggling when they turn up the voltage.

 

 

(the witch doesn’t actually set the commander on fire – the bomb strapped to his chest does that – or the fire came before, maybe – the witch is just there – the joke’s just too funny to pass up)

(not that he knows he’s making a joke at the time – just that it was funny – the agent didn’t have enough brains to be afraid of a lighted match when he saw one – when the ships catch crash the bird flies faster than the bones on the way out – flying without wings)

(a falcon’s just a fancy cousin of the crow, right?)

Lid slams shut. Hiss of gas through the tubes. Blood freezes in his veins. It hurts.

 

(death always hurts)

The Lady asks you a **question**.

You say **no**.

The Winter Soldier is a ghost story. The underworld’s boogieman. Something all the little assets tell themselves so they can stay awake at night. _There’s a rumor_ , they whisper. _There’s a story about a man that cannot die, that will not stop. That you cannot hide from._

For the few who’ve actually seen him, the elite that have watched him dance and ignored the screaming in his eyes, the rumors are true.

You will never be this good. But you _want_ to be this good.

The soldier inspires them to greatness. And to greater cruelty. There’s something about him, some hollow space carved out beside the grunting grace and absolute obedience, some quality in his eyes – they want to use him, overpower him, become greater – _ascend_ – and show him that they can.

It works. For awhile.

At its heart, a ghost story isn’t about the ghost at all. It’s about the haunting.

Serve. _Serve_.

_Serve._

_Serve._

_Serve._

 

“Bucky?”

He’s falling in reverse – falling – falling – leaving the plane behind –

Steve?

No.

_Serve._

_No._

Steve is falling – let go – you have to let go –

 

(let go)

 

Dropping from the burning helicarrier after his mission is not a _choice_ , not something the soldier can choose. He can’t choose for his heart to stop beating or his hands to keep from reaching. Reaching. For Steve.

So he falls. The water is only a little more forgiving than the ice.

In the original story, Icarus didn't make his wings just to see how close he could get to the sun. They didn’t melt off his arms because he thought he was immune to gravity and aerodynamics. It wasn't hubris that killed him.

Icarus and his father made their wings to escape from a labyrinth, a prison of his father’s design. Even though he was warned not to stray too far into the heat of day the lure of the sun was too much for Icarus to resist after so long in the **darkness**. 

In the end, it was love of the light that killed him. He fell into the blue **blue** sea, never to fly again.

Bucky first read about Icarus in a busted up library book on a cold night in January, curled up close to the lamp so the light wouldn’t wake Steve. That winter was a bad one. Any sleep Steve could eke out between all the coughing was precious.

He thinks about that myth a lot, _after_. About how everyone in the new and glittering world could read the same story he did all those years ago and not understand it the same way he did even then. About what all that sun on Icarus’s skin must have felt like.

“Steve! Steve will come and find me – he’ll – on a bridge – no!”

The buzzing saw stops at a gesture from the colonel standing just outside of shrapnel range. “We’ve been over this before, soldier. Your Steve. Is dead.”

“No. Sleeping. Sleeping. Needs a kiss to wake. Gonna be so alone. Iron men falling from the sky and I’m not there. I’m not. Steve. Steve, _help. Help._ ”

(somewhere, someone is screaming)

Ricochet, reset.  
Ricochet, reset.

That's all death is really. The slide and crack of a chamber moving under his hands. The bounce-back slingshot through space. The **darkness** between each heartbeat.

Ricochet. Reset.

The Lady asks you a **question**.

You say **no**.

Bucky’s not sure exactly what happened.

The Wakandans picked up a distress call, broadly transmitted, the same time Steve’s pocket started ringing the worst midi cover of AC/DC Bucky’s ever heard. The Avengers had all run out to the tarmac (though what _they_ could do about the situation, Bucky had no idea; everyone else was going, so why not?) T’Challa yelling something about the shields and the tower not being back on line yet – light on the far horizon – a ship entering the atmosphere way too fast, engine sparking – crash and crunch right into the force field – a wing _falling_ –

Bucky doesn’t even get the chance to flinch before the whole thing shimmers and collapses right on top of them. Then, like always, there’s **darkness**. And threaded in between the **darkness** there’s so much blue it hurts. 

He comes back the way he always does: like he’d closed his eyes for a moment and the world shifted around him. Noise rushes in all at once: fire crackling, shifting metal, angry men yelling. Oxygen and smoke burns into his startled lungs. 

There’s a shout and sudden movement next to him when he turns his head: Sam, panting, the whites of his eyes showing all the way around the lovely brown, even in the smoky gloom. He’s covered in blood up to the elbow… but he also looks like he’s seen a ghost, so it’s probably all Bucky’s blood then. No need to be worried.

The smoke’s coming from what’s left of an honest-to-god spaceship crumpled on the side of the landing pad. It looks like it clipped the side of the force field just as it was coming down; the left wing is sheared off and lying in pieces around – and, up until recently he’s willing to bet, _through_ – Bucky. He thinks he’s the only casualty since the shouting is angry and upset but not pained or afraid. 

It makes sense once he figures out who’s actually making all the damn noise. Steve’s across the tarmac surrounded by a golden halo – literally this time, and not just in Bucky’s stupidly romantic brain. A man in a red cape is standing between him and Tony Stark making an odd gesture with his hands and noticeably straining against whatever Steve’s doing to counterbalance his hold. Stark’s half in the Iron Man armor and held back by the same halo of light, though he accepts it better than Steve. There’s… people?… Bucky doesn’t recognize hovering around the wreckage and watching them nervously ( _guardians, guarding, little bit of both_ ). The spider kid from Germany is clutching at his mask and looking about two seconds away from a full-on panic attack. In the next field over Thor’s watching the Hulk tear apart a tree.

They all look a little singed around the edges but otherwise unharmed. Good. The inside of the ship must’ve been made of sturdier stuff than it looked. 

The Iron Man helmet is lying in the gravel at Bucky’s feet, a small puddle of his congealing blood pooling around the sparking edge of its chin. He has the oddest sensation that the unlit eyes are judging him. 

Bucky clears his throat and begins the process of standing up. It’s gross – his back peels away from where the blood’s glued him to the ground with a wet _schlicking_ sound. A little cascade of gravel crumbles off him as he stretches out the kinks. He’s pretty sure some of the lumpy red things under his feet used to be inside him. Yikes.

He clears his throat again. “Steve. Stop. Just, stop fighting. It wasn’t their fault.”

“Bucky?” Steve’s head whips around so fast Bucky worries he’ll hurt his neck. Then the gold halo disappears and he drops to the ground like a doll whose strings were cut. He stumbles and crawls the last few feet until he can wrap both arms around Bucky, sticky fluids be damned. Bucky holds him just as tightly; he’s always hated seeing Steve cry. 

He tucks Steve’s head into his shoulder and rubs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry I scared you, Stevie. It normally doesn’t take so long; spinal injuries are the worst to come back from. You just cry it out ‘til you feel better, that’s all right. You’re all right.”

The others are staring. Right, the ‘dead man walking’ act usually freaked people out the first couple times they see it. Though with the way their eyes keep flickering from one to the other it’s equal parts Bucky’s resurrection and Steve’s reaction to it that’s giving them the creeping terrors.

It’s Sam that recovers first, or at least is the first whose shock bypasses his brain and gains control of his mouth. “You were dead! I tried to save you but you – you were almost cut in half! I. _What?_ ”

Bucky tilts his head so he can see him without dislodging Steve. His face has gone all pale; normally Sam has the steadiest constitution of all of them but Bucky’s a little worried. “Yeah, that’s a thing. Sorry, Wilson. Thanks for trying, though. I appreciate the effort.”

T’Challa stumbles forward a few steps, eyes large but royal bearing wrapped around himself like armor. “I do not know who to thank for this miracle but I am relieved you are back with us, Barnes. The medical team should be here shortly. Do you… uh, do not try to move too much until they arrive.”

“Thanks, sir, but you can call off your team. I’m fine now, really.”

“Then I offer my apologies, instead. The shield should not have failed to respond. It appears we were unaware that some of the generators were damaged in the battle. I am relieved no one else was seriously harmed and regret any suffering it may have caused you.”

“Yeah, that was our fault probably.” Stark waves a gauntleted hand in the air; Bucky’s been trying to avoid looking at him so at least he assumes that’s what the red and gold glint in the corner of his eye is. 

The human-looking male that came in with the aliens seems to be recovering the best out of all of them. (Bucky supposes being hard to ruffle is a valuable trait to have when your life is an R-rated version of _Star Trek_.) “We had a little problem with one of our passengers sabotaging our landing and stealing a pod.”

“Nebula was _really mad_ you guys killed Thanos before she could,” the soft looking antennae girl interrupts.

Stark shivers. “Yeah, next time I start talking about how cool it is to be a cyborg remind me of that chick.”

Steve’s breathing has evened out but the stress of the last few days seems to have finally done him in; he’s limp and docile in Bucky’s arms. His forehead’s damp and clammy against Bucky’s neck as he turns his head just enough to glare at Stark without actually moving. His voice is rough and low and travels perfectly well over the mechanical crackling still smoldering behind them. “You finally got your revenge, Tony. Was it everything you thought it would be?”

Bucky can’t help but flinch. Jesus Christ, Stevie.

It’s not any kind of consolation that Stark flinches just as hard. He shrugs and watches the deflation of the Hulk back into Banner, conveniently timed so he doesn’t have to look anyone in the eye without appearing to avoid doing so. 

“What do you think? I’m not going to apologize for the way I feel. He killed my parents. No amount of _sorry_ is going to make up for that.” The Iron Man armor curls away from Stark’s body like a living thing. He’s a lot smaller without it than Bucky remembers. “But. The way I handled it was… maybe not the best. I know you don’t think much of me but – _fuck, Steve_ – I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Let alone someone who… fuck.”

Steve slowly rubs his chin against Bucky’s collarbone. Bucky can’t see his expression but he’d place odds on the Angry Frown of Disappointment. Or maybe not – after a minute Steve shifts so he’s lying completely in Bucky’s lap, arms curled around Bucky’s shoulders and eyes buried in the curve of his neck. Bucky rubs his back and lets him hide.

Once again Bucky’s reminded this argument isn’t really about him. Still, the Stark’s are a can of worms he doesn’t feel up to opening right now. He certainly doesn’t have the energy to deal with the fallout of admitting this is actually the second time Tony’s killed him.

The recovery teams hovering on the edge of the tarmac swarm over them then, either the transformation of the Hulk or the de-escalation of Steve and Tony’s drama the go ahead they’d been waiting for. Bucky’s gore covered state is clearly high on their triage list but he glares them to a halt before they can disturb Steve. They hover determinedly until T’Challa nods them over to Stark and the others, moving to stand protectively over their little huddle himself. And okay; Bucky’s pretty much ready to swear fealty to the crown at this point. 

His eyes follow the medics and firemen moving busily – if a trifle unnecessarily – across the tarmac. Rocket comes out of wherever he was hiding to complain about the state of his ship and how the others couldn’t be left alone without their captain to supervise them, which of course prompts the rest of the aliens to argue back just as loudly. Despite the foul language they’re all clearly glad to see each other… that is, if bared teeth mean happiness and not aggression in their respective cultures. Rocket’s tail is wagging a little and Groot looks up from his game long enough to wave, so Bucky’s pretty sure that’s a yes.

The sight of the man’s smile sparks something in the back of Bucky’s mind. Green and _gold_ and blue. His left hand tightens into a fist against Steve’s back. Red Cloak’s face pinches when his attention’s drawn to it.

“I’m sorry about your friend.” Bucky doesn’t know why he says it. He just opens his mouth and out it comes. He thinks there may be more words hiding in there but he’s not sure how to say them.

The man – Quill, Rocket had called him – spins in his tracks. “What? What did you say? Yo, Re-Animator, I’m talking to you! Are you talking about Gamora?”

Bucky doesn’t get any of those references. Maybe this guy’s more alien than he thought. “Who the hell is Gamora?”

Stark groans and buries his head in his hands, pissing off the medic dabbing at the cut on his forehead. “Not this again.”

Everyone starts yelling again but Bucky has officially reached his limit; as Shuri would say: he’s run out of fucks to give. He lets his head rest on top of Steve’s and closes his eyes. The noise washes over them like rain.

(i think if you tried you could see it, too – if you just tried, Stevie – then maybe you’d understand)

“I’m not telling you _nothing_ , pal! You’ll see. Cap’s gonna come get me and you’ll be in for a world of fucking hurt.”

“We’re not asking you any questions, soldier. There is nothing you know we do not. Your Captain America is dead. We’ve told you this before. Why do you refuse to believe us?” The colonel – some Soviet fuck Bucky has yet to get a name on – is the very picture of a composed officer deigning to impart wisdom to his troops. There’s always the hint of a smile lurking on his face; a personality better fitting politics than torture.

If he’s trying to be Bucky’s friend then he’s shit out of luck. “And I’ve told _you_ you’re full of shit before, too. Cap’ll bring his people and they’ll tear a hole through this place so big you could drive a fucking tank through it. You can fuck off, you fucking –“

“I thought you’d insist on something like that.” The colonel gestures to one of the lackeys hovering just outside of Bucky’s view. It bothers the hell out of him, not being able to see what they might be up to back there, but the straps make it impossible to turn his head far enough to keep them in sight. He hates this _fucking chair_ so much.

A copy of _The Tribune_ lands in Bucky’s lap. The title is very disturbing.

Bucky stares at it a minute, unable to pull his eyes away. Then he shakes himself back to blustering. They’re messing with him again, they have to be; anyone can fake a newspaper like that. “Bullshit. You hear me? Bull. Shit.“

Another paper drops on top of the first, then another, and another. The higher the stack gets the more foreign the language. Soon the only thing Bucky recognizes are the pictures beneath the text: all propaganda and bold face lies.

Bucky feels like his brain is splitting in half. This can’t be real.

Another paper. And another. This time Bucky has no trouble reading the print; he’d recognize that typeface in the **dark**.

“No. No! Steve – Steve has a team, they. They save New York from – Steve saves – he’s in New York –“ 

_The New York Times_ slides off Bucky’s knee to fold in on itself around his ankle. He closes his eyes against the rasp of old, cheap paper but the headline’s still there, embossed in the **darkness** of his eyelids.

**CAP AMERICA DECLARED LOST AT SEA  
NATION MOURNS FALLEN HEROES**

The date is wrong. The date is.

“And still, you must deny it. Even with the evidence of your own eyes. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” the colonel sighs, the tone of his voice as close to true regret as Bucky’s ever heard it. 

There’s a metallic squeaking behind him and then the unmistakable _click clack click clack_ of a projector revving up. There’s a flicker of light – so familiar – and he opens his eyes like a reflex.

The Commandos stare back at him, solemn faced and proud, standing on a podium above a sea of people. Mourners, every one, their black armbands stark in the dull colorlessness of the newsreel. There’s some suit giving a speech. Politicians Bucky doesn’t recognize shake hands, a flag waves at half mast. And Peggy. In the background always Peggy, face as perfectly made up as any movie star. But Bucky knows that look on her face, knows it for the mirror one on Steve’s when something doesn’t go their way. For when some idiot made decisions without consulting them first or when the brass didn’t listen to their plan.

God. It really was her. It was really them.

But.

“No. No, Steve’s alive. He’s _alive_. I know he’s alive. He’s alive so he’ll come for me. He has to come for me.”

The newsreel starts over. The opening shot is of Arlington and – fuck – that’s – that’s _his name there_ , carved into stone. Someone’s even put flowers under it. 

He has no idea when the colonel moved so close to the chair but his voice rustles against the little hairs rising on the back of Bucky’s neck. “If someone were coming for you, don’t you think they’d be here by now?” He points to where the Commandos are projected onto the wall. Dugan squints into the sun or against some unnamed emotion he’d never let Bucky see. “Don’t you think _they’d_ be here? No one is coming for you, soldier. You belong to us now.” 

He stands again, looming just outside of Bucky’s peripheral vision. “Accept it, and let our work truly begin.”

Lines of little girls, five by five, blank eyes, silent stares. Never quite women, never quite grown, never quite different than a doll.

Except.

“That one,” he says, pointing without looking. The _echo_ of legs around his shoulders, a beating heart against his ear, pale lips telling his story. A spark of mischief buried deep in her veins. The soldier doesn’t know why, exactly, but he likes her. Thinks someone else will, too; that she’ll grow strong and sharp and smile – before he remembers he’s not supposed to think anymore.

Yes. That one. 

 

She hits him just as hard as he knew she would.

He hits her harder. Order through pain. Love through hardship. And really, isn’t love for children?

 

The soldier falls to the ice and the Lady and the **question**. The girl is gone the next time he opens his eyes, disappeared into the night on strands of silken web. 

It’s nice to know he was right about her being stronger than him. It makes him smile in the brief moments before the words and the lightning take it all away.

(slap on the face – bruised lip – tender skin)

( _hard reset_ )

(wonder if it’s raining)

"I said _report_ , soldier.”

(jagged little moment – perfect and clear – a buzzing behind the teeth like bees – like current)

“Spider will kill you. Make you dance dance dance. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” 

(it’s funny – it’s so fucking funny and you don’t know why)

(but you can guess)

 

(all the king’s horses and all the king’s men – couldn’t put you together again)

 

Being knocked unconscious isn’t enough to stop Bucky; they actually have to tie his hands together to keep him from scratching the skin of his face, his shoulder already a red mess of welts through the torn seams of his coat. Morita’s hovering over him still, practically wringing his hands as he worries. Steve wants to tell him he did the right thing but can’t quite get the words out.

They’re miles from the nearest friendly face. Even though a quick scout of the surrounding area revealed the three suspected corpses but no active troops Steve still doesn’t like the chances of carrying an injured man all the way back to camp without bringing down the entire Wehrmacht down on them. 

So they wait; crouched down the hill from the smoldering embers of the base and pacing like caged animals, Bucky writhing on the ground at their feet.

Steve’s muscles are just starting to quiver from all the pent up adrenaline when the tension finally reaches a breaking point. Turns out Dugan’s hat is the first casualty, thrown into the dirt as he banks around a tree. “God damn it. _God damn it._ I’ll say it, if none of you cowards want to be the first. _What the fuck just happened?_ ”

Gabe shifts his rifle against his shoudler, frowning out into the woods around them. “Never seen a gun do that to a man before.” 

Steve shakes out his arms, hopefully subtle enough the men won’t notice him doing it. “It’s just another one of Hydra’s little toys.” 

Monty frowns at him – so not subtle at all, then. There’s a sick and empty beat in the conversation where Bucky would normally snort or crack a joke; they all wait for it, breathing into the silence. Buck just sweats in the leaf litter and flinches away from Morita’s touch.

Dernier spits into the dirt. _“If that’s what the newest crop of Hydra weapons does then we’re all fucked._ ”

“They all looked the same to me.” Monty tugs open the pack they always hide Hydra’s worst in for delivery to Howard. The rifles look… like regular guns. A thicker barrel than the one the Commandos all carried but otherwise unremarkable.

It’s Gabe who figures it out. “They’re empty. The fuel source is gone. They’re not glowing blue anymore, see?”

A shudder travels down Steve’s spine.

Dugan pushes his hat so tight onto his head his eyebrows disappear. “I’m telling you, that shit is _not_ normal. I can’t be the only one fucked up about this. Right, guys?” 

“Oh, for Christ’s sakes, Dum Dum–”

“Begging your pardon, but _fuck you_ , Captain, sir. You mean to tell me shit like this happens all the time? That Bucky’s just fine and everything’s hunky dory? What about that _scream_ , huh? I ain’t never heard a man make a sound like that before.” 

Steve’s jaw clenches at the mere _suggestion_ something’s wrong with Bucky, a gut defense he couldn’t stop if his life depended on it. He’s spent so long defending them from all sides it’s practically instinct to shift in front of his curled shape and deny anything out of the ordinary was happening at all… even with all evidence pointing to the contrary. 

He’s not sure if Gabe recognizes the tension in his posture or has just spent long enough with the two of them together that he’s learned to tread this ground carefully. He settles a hand on Steve’s shoulder, thumb digging a little into the muscle. “You haven’t been in the trenches before, Steve. We have. We’ve all heard and seen things. But this is…”

“It wasn’t human.” Steve turns to find Morita kneeling at Bucky’s side, one hand taking Bucky’s pulse and the other picking apart the ruins of his coat. There’s a hole in it Steve hadn’t noticed at first, just where the straps cut across his ribs, the blue fabric scorched a mottled brown around the edges. 

Silence falls thick into the air around them. Steve takes a deep breath of the crisp fall air, taking in the smell smoke and leaf decay. He forces himself to look away from that spot on Bucky’s chest.

(The skin under the burned place is perfect, pink and smooth and whole. That night Steve will press kisses into it until Bucky shoves him away and draws his attention elsewhere.)

Monty shakes his head, slowly, watching Bucky with fear in his eyes. “There are more things on heaven and in earth, Horatio.”

“No.” Steve’s the leader; they have to follow him on this. He just has to make them understand. “We’ve all seen guys hit with something that tore them up before, inside and out. The only difference here is that Bucky’s still in one piece.” 

Gabe flinches. Dernier ducks his head, murmuring what might be a prayer beneath his breath. 

It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.

They look as one to where Bucky’s half buried under the mulch. He looks anything but dead.

Monty lowers his beret like he was at a funeral, thumb rubbing along the edge of the medallion. “I think you might be wrong there, mate.” 

The tension’s creeping into Steve’s jaw again. He shakes the thoughts out of his head sharply. They need to defend the perimeter if they’re going to stay here much longer. They have to maintain their priorities. “It doesn’t matter. We get him home. That’s the mission now. We get him home.”

 

Bucky’s back on his feet just a few hours later. His throat hurts and his chest is a little sore, but otherwise swears he feels fine. He says he doesn’t remember anything after he saw the gun aim at Steve.

Bucky’s eyes, a mercurial gray or green or hazel in the right light, are an electric blue when he lies to them in the shadow of the trees that fading afternoon. It’s a shade Steve doesn’t remember seeing before; he’s sure he’s memorized every shadow and hue of those eyes, but this one’s new.

It’s easy to become confused. Spirals of _choice_ and _fate_ and _consequence_ and so many possibilities for every single one – all the calculus of the world spread out before him and half the time his head hurt so much he could barely see it, let alone translate what it was trying to tell him. 

Electricity works. Clears out all the messy confusion, burns away all the tangled up threads until the sight is clean. Directed.

Reformatting the drive. Tugging on the strings of time and fate that bound him to the waves of the world. Connect him to the machine and aim voltage through his brain, all the delicate bits doing a hard reset. Factory settings. _Serve. Serve._

Electricity _hurt_. 

(sobbing in the Chair so hard he couldn’t breathe – something wrong something – u e b l u e **b l u e b l u E B L U** – _something’s **wrong**_ ) 

Once he has the choice to refuse the electricity he does, running far and fast for the chance they may not catch him. He hopes he’ll be hard to find now that he’s not there to play Hydra’s compass anymore. He tries to plan for everything, just in case. 

He takes notes, sets alarms, finds little ways to tie himself to the place his body happens to be in at any given time. He gets pretty good at working through the confusion. Some of his memories are clear – the ~~path~~ shining so brightly once he finds it again he can turn and see it laid out behind him like a long silver road. It helps to remember them when the parts he doesn’t understand rear up unexpectedly. Like, there’s _facts_ and then there’s things he _knows_. There’s things that are supposed to have happened and didn’t or weren’t supposed to and did anyway. 

The possibility of _choice_ adds a lot more variables to an already staggering calculation. He knows what Hydra did changed things sometimes. If he could see the ~~path~~ of something, could he keep it from happening, too? Did his influence change anything at all? Were some things just fated to be? And in the vastness of the universe, known and unknown, _did any of it fucking matter?_

He bought a lottery ticket once, to test the theory, and missed every number. The next day he let the machine choose and landed on the super mega winner. He’d been too scared to turn it in, which meant the person who won after him got even more money and wouldn’t have won at all if he hadn’t played, which sent him down another corkscrew of possibility.

The law of probability was fucking broken. Each moment bumped into another into another into another and it gave Bucky a fucking migraine. He was living somewhere he didn’t recognize – a god damn impossible year. 

It was hard to believe anything was actually happening, or ever happened at all. It was hard to _believe_ it… but it fairly easy to _accept_ it.

Becoming an international terrorist for one of the few crimes he didn’t actually do? _Of course_.

Captain America in his kitchen getting handsy with his journal? _Yeah, okay. You’re Steve. Whatever you say._

Angry man in a cat suit trying to kill him? _Sure. Why the hell not._

 

He should’ve known how it was going to end from the start.

His fingers are burning. He’s got to give Steve a chance to get up, got to give them a _chance_ –

He's screaming, pain flaring into force and heat and then –

Bucky's falling.

Something hits him. A beam of solid light forcing him down to his knees. The world goes static. 

He sees sparks out of the corner of his eye and oh shit there goes his fucking arm again. He’s staring at the spot where his arm used to be and there’s sparks instead of blood and he’s thinking _so this is what shock feels like_ –

The pain hits him the same time Stark does. It’s a relief to lie sizzling on the concrete for as long as the **darkness** lets him.

The Lady asks you a **question**.

You say **no**.

Steve keeps replaying the final battle with Thanos in his head. He’s read all the reports, talked to everyone who had a different vantage point than he did, and to his eternal frustration everyone has a slightly different story. No one can pinpoint the exact moment when the tide turned in their favor. Thor raining down from the sky like a vengeful god was certainly a moment worth remembering, Steve’s not arguing that, but there was something… not right about it all. He could feel it in his bones.

He’d been _so close_. He could _feel_ the warm metal of the gauntlet in his hands. And then… nothing.

The lab comes to life around them, picking up Shuri’s biosignature and opening the last projects she was working on. She closes them before Bucky can grow too curious and brings up the scans from his file instead. She likes him, not the least because he brings such intriguing problems to her door, but there’s some things that need to remain private.

“How are you feeling, Bucky? Are you sleeping regularly? The boys aren’t bothering you too much, I hope?”

“No, they’re all right. Can’t blame them for thinking I’m funny looking, considering.” He gestures to himself, highlighting his missing arm and general whiteness, though Shuri can’t help but think he’s as far from Ross’s arrogant stupidity than it’s possible to be. 

She smirks a little, bringing forward the padded bench so he can sit comfortably while they talk. “I hear they call you the White Wolf.” 

“I’m sure it’s just a term of endearment about my stirring charisma.” 

“Of course.” His wit is so dry she can’t help herself from laughing. “I think perhaps it’s because their only exposure to this sort of thing is the Black Panther, which you clearly are not. You’re a foreigner but pose no actual threat. There are no wolves in Wakanda, did you know? They’ve likely only heard of them in stories or in nature documentaries, so they’re very dramatic figures. Plus all the snow.”

Bucky runs his hand through his hair, disturbing the careful braid one of the children must have done for him. “No actual threat. Sure.”

“Not anymore, remember? We’ve worked hard to keep it that way.”

His smile is soft, lopsided, a little dorky. She really did like him – but he’d deflected the sleeping question, which meant she’d have to keep an eye on him. She added a little note in her calendar and brought up his files to the big projector so he could see them, too. Back to business.

“Now that the codewords have been dealt with and your injuries are stabilized I’d like to focus on some abnormalities I found in relation to your last prosthesis. Your blood work results are… well, I’m not sure how to say this nicely. You’re a mess, Bucky. I honestly don’t know how you’re standing here talking to me right now and not rolling around on the floor hemorrhaging all of your major organs.”

“That’s… graphic?”

“I said I didn’t know how to be nice about it. There are traces of unknown radiation in your body that even in such small amounts should have killed both you and everyone around you within a mile radius. Your body should have rejected the implants but somehow _merged_ with them instead. The grafts throughout your skeleton are made from a type of metal I’ve never seen before. Structurally it behaves very similarly to vibranium; it deflects and absorbs vibrations, is incredibly resilient, and reacted explosively to the alloy in Iron Man’s arc reactor. Despite having access to some of the files kept by Hydra we don’t know where it came from or who designed it; I suspect it originated in a similar way to how the vibranium was deposited in Wakanda.”

“I thought the vibranium here came from a meteorite? You’re saying my arm’s from space?”

“No. Not exactly. Not like, _R2D2 phone home_ space. Anyway, that doesn’t matter now.” 

“If my arm’s an alien I’d say that it mattered.”

“What _matters_ is that the serum or some other variable mutated your cells and allowed the arm to deposit – I don’t know what to call them. They look like the vibranium nanites the textile team developed for the Panther suit except they’re _in your blood_. There are atoms in your body that work and exist independently from the rest of it, which shouldn’t be possible. I can only theorize that the arm _downloaded_ them into your system as a sort of repair mechanism. The nanites reform and replicate your natural structures as soon as damage occurs. Do you understand what I’m saying, Bucky?”

“I have little machines inside me keeping me alive.”

“ _Organic_ machines. At this point there’s so many it’s impossible to separate the introduced nanites to the native cells. They’ve likely been working for years already and show no signs of stopping, even though the majority site of the original infection has been disconnected. It’s possible they were there even before the arm was attached but I can’t see where they could possibly have originated anywhere else.” She takes a deep breath. This is the hard part. “I’m sure you’ve noticed they are very good at their job. Combined with other mutations caused by the serum I can only assume that your lifespan will be extended unnaturally long.”

“Pretty sure it already is.” She could almost see the light draining from his face, the grim bit of hope and humor she’d so enjoyed bringing back to his life fading completely. He looked so _tired_ …

She waves away the projections and sinks down next to him on the bench, swinging her feet back and forth a little. Why did this feel so much like failure when it hadn’t even been a proper experiment? “I hate the word _unknown_. It just means someone was too lazy to do the proper research and find the cause of a thing. If something’s truly unknown then you investigate and name it and then it’s not _unknown_ anymore, is it? So trust me when I say that I’m just as upset about all the holes in your diagnosis as you are.” She knocks his shoulder with hers. “It means we get to name the metal though, if you want.”

He snorts. “Buckanium.”

“Excuse you. _Shurinium_ , clearly.”

“Excuse _you_. It’s attached to _my_ bones.”

“And I’m the one who found it there. According to the longstanding archaeological traditions of your people that means I can call it what I want.” The corner of his mouth tilts again, the shy smile daring to make an appearance. She goes in for the kill. “I looked it up and everything. There were actual textbooks involved. I got a papercut, see?”

He bumps their shoulders again; she’d braced herself already, expecting it. “Your poor finger. I hope it leaves a scar.”

“I want to tear your body apart and study it on a molecular level, so consider us even.” She hops down from the bench and back to her station. Now that the hard parts are out of the way they can move on to the interesting ones. “While we don’t have any _shurinium_ deposits available we do have vibranium to spare. I’ve reverse engineered the original design almost exactly. It’s all very inspiring, really, though there’s certainly room for improvement. We can make it lighter for a start, perhaps install some other mechanical components like weapons or – how do you feel about being your own wifi router? It’s a little outdated but it might come in handy if you ever – “

“Shuri, stop. Please.”

The blueprints stutter half-formed under her hands. Bucky reaches out to them, stopping their spin. The cool light doesn’t do his complexion any favors.

He takes a deep breath. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, I really do. I can’t even begin to thank you properly for it. But…”

“You don’t want me to build you an arm.” Shuri steps away from the display, her hands clasped over the sinking feeling in her belly. She never even asked him if he wanted one, merely assumed a replacement for what he lost would make him feel better. For that matter she hadn’t asked before she went poking around in the anatomy of his body like all the other ‘scientists’ before her must have done. 

She feels terrible. A terrible idiot child. She straightens her spine and turns to him. “I’m sorry, Bucky. I should have known better.”

“No, no. I know you only wanted to help.” He tugs one of her hands away from her middle and presses the knuckle to his lips, then tucks it safe against his chest. Her gut twists even further; her father used to do _exactly that_ when she was feeling sad…

Bucky gives her time to breathe through the visceral reaction rolling through her body, neither ignoring nor calling attention to the tears she wipes away. Instead he rubs his thumb along her wrist and admires the mural scrolling through her lab. He seems to gather his thoughts just as she gathers hers. “I know war is inevitable,” he says. “The fight doesn’t stop just because I want to lay down arms. If you’ll pardon the expression.”

She groans and pokes him in the sternum before pulling her hand away. He smiles at her, sadly, voice going soft. “I’m really tired, Shuri. I’d like to try living without a weapon for awhile, while I can. Do you think that’s selfish of me?”

“In a way, maybe. But it’s your body, Bucky. Who else has the right to be selfish about it but you?”

He shakes his head. “This hasn't been my body in years.”

The horrible thing is that it’s true; her tests have told them that, if nothing else. She wracks her brain for a way to explain. “It may not be the original body you started out with but they never really are. Time and circumstance sees to that. But it is the body you live in. Only you get to decide what color to paint the walls of your home. No one is going to plaster horrible wallpaper over it again. And do _not_ tell T’Challa I used that horrible metaphor or else I’ll turn you magnetic.” 

His whole face scrunches up when he laughs. She feels incredibly proud of herself all over again.

“How'd such a young girl like you get so wise, huh?” 

Ugh. He’s so ridiculously old fashioned that it really shouldn’t be any kind of charming at all, let alone bring the swell of warmth to her cheeks. She rolls her eyes at him. “The internet. There’s this thing called GOO GAL. We’ll get to that lesson tomorrow.” 

“Very funny, your highness.”

She pokes him again, a little more gently this time. “Seriously, though. I listen to people even wiser than me when they tell me things. Like to get enough sleep, for example.” 

Bucky just nods at her chiding. Shuri decides to let it go for now; she worries she’ll turn into her mother if she keeps badgering him about it. Although… in hindsight, the Queen Mother would have sussed out Bucky’s self-worth nonsense over dinner, had him feeling at least temporarily better about himself by dessert, and convinced him to see a professional counselor before the plates were even taken away. Shuri should be so lucky to grow into that type of person.

She gathers all of her blueprints and notes into a little ball of data and casts it into the folder on her private server where she hides the cat memes she messages to Okoye. “It’s your choice, Bucky. If and when you need it, the arm will be here waiting for you. But let us hope it never comes to that.”

“Yes. Let us hope.”

Good becomes great. Bad becomes worse. Everything amplified. In Steve, the transformation is obvious. Glorious and golden as sunshine. Stubborn and solid as a rock.

Bucky’s not sure how close Zola had been to reproducing the serum. If the same rules applied or if there’s enough of a variance that Bucky wasn’t all that altered. If the different types of radiation made a difference. He thinks, knowing what he does about Doctor Banner, that maybe it did. He doesn’t remember enough about the time between the Table and the Chair to be sure.

He knows it did _something_ to him. He doesn’t need a fancy lab to tell him that. The things he’s been through, what he’s _seen_ … it should have killed him ten times over, even before the tesseract and the arm got their shiny claws in him. 

But really, what Bucky thinks he does best – what he’s absolutely certain he was placed on this earth to do, whether he wants to or not – is _endure_.

Everything else is just a bonus.

“The Tesseract has shown me so much. It's more than just knowledge, it's truth. I wonder what it will show you.”

Bucky Barnes never loses a round of cards unless he means to.

This talent is new to Steve, who recalls Bucky as an adequate opponent over countless rounds of gin rummy when they were kids, but nothing extraordinary. Bucky’s hands must have learned the trick of dealing perfectly sometime during the phantom months they were apart; that lost and hollow year Steve doesn’t think he’ll ever forget.

As it is, anytime they bump into another unit or have the smallest bit of leave Bucky starts shuffling and refills his supplies without even bothering to hit the supply tent. If some blue comics or D rations find their way into the other Howlies packs they never say anything about; the Commandos get a lot of practice about what topics are off limits for discussion. 

By late summer they all know not to take Bucky up on his offers of a friendly game, anyway. All except Dum Dum, living up to his nickname and determined to finally catch the card shark with his pants down. Steve’s sure it’s one of those alpha male bonding things he never understood. The first week into their training as a unit Steve had to put a halt to them actually placing bets on the game after Bucky won Dugan’s pants in a hand of five-card stud; why should they all suffer because Dum Dum was too stubborn to quit? 

“I just don’t see the appeal of it, Bucky,” he says now, watching the cards dealt gracefully out of Bucky’s hands. “Wouldn’t stacking the deck make playing boring?”

“Counting cards is cheating, Steve. I would never do that to my esteemed colleague here.” Dugan chews on his cigar and shuffles his hand around, glaring at Bucky over the cards. Bucky just winks at him and breathes out his own plume of smoke. “The game’s just easy, that’s all.”

Dugan discards two and replaces them with a fresh pair. “Easy, my ass.” 

Dernier blows Dum Dum a kiss. “ _Ooh, such a lady to give up her ass on the first date!_ ” 

“What was that, Frenchie? It better not be remarks against my ass. I’ll have you know it’s a very fine one, indeed.”

Steve covers the bottom half of his face until he can hide the grin behind a cough. Gabe doesn’t even bother, safely out of range of Dugan’s temper on the other side of the camp.

“I’m sure your ass is very nice, Dum Dum. Now are we gonna play or what?”

“All right then, you little shit. If this game’s so easy then what's in my hand right now?” 

Bucky ashes his cigarette and leans his elbows on his knees. “No pair Jack high. You really are a terrible bluffer, Dugan.” 

Dum Dum throws the cards down in the dirt between them, huffing through his mustache. Dernier laughs from where he’s leaning against a tree. 

Morita doesn’t even bother to look up from the radio he’s fiddling with. “He’s counting.” 

“I am not! I swear!”

“Then prove it.” Steve gathers the cards together, shuffles until he’s sure they’re mixed, and lays out a hand face down. “How about now?” 

“Two sixes and half a flush. You’re no better at this than he is, Steve.” 

The Commandos all boo from their respective corners, Dum Dum throwing tufts of grass at Bucky when Steve flips the cards to reveal exactly that. “The deck’s marked, it’s gotta be!”

“Oh, yeah? Falsworth, get out your deck.” 

Grinning, Monty sets aside his half-finished letter and digs in his pack. Dernier jumps up to lean over his shoulder as he shuffles. They stay well out of Bucky’s peripheral vision just in case. Monty holds up a card.

Bucky looks Dugan in the eye, smirking. “Ace of clubs.”

_“I’ll be damned.”_

“Nice one, Barnes.”

Monty holds up another. And another.

“Two of hearts. Three of spades. Four of spades. Nine diamonds. Six diamonds. Five clubs. King, queen, ace, seven, nine, ten, two –“

“All right, easy Nostradmus, slow down! I haven’t even lifted the cards yet!” 

Falsworth might be laughing but the humor’s slid right off Dernier’s face. Bucky’s teeth are still bared, though the soft glow of the cigarette turns his smile mean. It’s burned past the filter now; Bucky hasn’t so much as blinked.

He doesn’t look entirely like Bucky anymore.

Dugan glances at the others and twitches up a smile like it’s all in fun; his eyes snap back to Bucky like a magnet. Like he’s something dangerous he doesn’t want to lose sight of.

The silence finally distracts Morita from his radio. He looks at the pile of cards, then at Bucky. “Damn. You psychic or something, Barnes?” 

It’s like a switch is flipped; Bucky relaxes all at once, shoulders curling, eyelashes dusting against his cheeks. He stubs the cigarette out against his boot. “Don't be stupid, Morita. I told you – it’s an easy game.” 

Bucky grabs his deck out of Dugan’s slack grip and gets up to stow them in his pack, wandering into the woods to water the grass. 

Steve makes eye contact with Dugan. His moustache is quivering.

 

Working at the circus made Dum Dum Dugan keenly superstitious and just as keen to point out a racket when he saw one. The others come to their beliefs like all men who go to war do, latching onto and discarding faith with the whistle of the bombs overhead.

They all love Bucky, so none of them mention this moment when the blue blaze strikes him not a month later. But by god, are they all thinking of it.

 

 

Bucky’s always been good at seeing the lines of the world, the hidden _angles_ leading from one moment to the next. It’s just math, really, simple equations tangling up the law of probability. Trajectories; positions and particles and ~~paths~~ people take through space. 

_Bounce a rock off the wall here to hit Jason Kirby’s fat forehead. There’s bound to be trouble if Steve goes to the rally alone. Hold your gun just this way to aim fire kill._ Ricochet, reset.

But after –

– after –

– after Steve pulls him from the table –

– after a rush of blue fills his vision his mind his body –

– after the Lady –

– after the conduits of the universe blossom open around him –

After all that, _seeing_ and _knowing_ become something more. It’s perceiving the great vastness of the universe and calculating the course of any given object inside of it. Once an object is in motion it collides with another object and so on and so on until it reaches its final destination. The trick is seeing it all the way to the end of the line. You just have to move things around in space so that the object reacts in a predictable fashion. Or move space around the object; sometimes that’s easier, depending on the object. The more stubborn the object, the more delicate the move. Sometimes it’s about seeing the ~~path~~ laid out before you, grabbing hold of it under your feet and dragging it somewhere it doesn’t want to go. Kicking and screaming the whole fucking way if you have to.

"Tell the King to aim for the head, not the heart."

The soldier lines up his shot. Behind him the handler leans in, listening. 

"Or chop his arm off first. It hurts. Can’t stop you if he can’t make a fist." The servos in the asset’s arm rev, though his grip on the rifle doesn’t move a millimeter. The handler’s hand inches toward the baton on his belt. 

The soldier fires, his eyes seeing something different than what’s at the other end of the scope. The handler flinches at the _bang_. 

The soldier lowers the gun. Somewhere, someone is screaming. "Either way. Target eliminated."

Bruce finds Bucky sitting in the grass just at the edge of the palace grounds where the cultivated green of the gardens gives way to the chaos of the jungle. It’s a lovely spot, exactly the right distance between the two to avoid being deafened by the birds in the trees and far enough away from the buildings to not obstruct the view of the sky above. Bruce would’ve thought Bucky had seen enough of it, given the alien invasion that happened the other day, but he’d still escaped down here like always to count the clouds.

Bucky’s alone this time, Steve squirreled away in a meeting with T’Challa and the others that Bruce hadn’t been invited to. He doesn’t mind; he trusts them to tell him about whatever new drama’s creeping over the horizon if he needs to worry. 

Bucky glances up at his approach but otherwise doesn’t bother to move. Stretched out as he is in a puddle of sunshine, Bruce can’t really blame him. “Doctor Banner. Glad to see you out in the green instead of that color yourself. I thought you were more of an indoor nerd, though.”

“Well, even houseplants need fresh air every once in awhile. Mind if I join you?” He settles onto the grass at Bucky’s side, shifting around until he can stretch his legs out without having every rock in the country poke him in the butt. The gardens spread out before them. “It really is beautiful here. I’ve been to some amazing places in my time but this is something else.”

“Yeah, Wakanda’s pretty great.” Bucky squints an eye at him. “But something tells me you didn’t track me down all the way out here just for the breeze. Or the company.”

Bruce plucks a blade of grass and winds it between his fingers. He really should have brought a pen or something to fidget with. “Can I ask you a personal question? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Bucky sighs and rolls onto his side facing Bruce, the _whatever_ expressed clearly in the tilt of his eyebrows.

Bruce can actually feel the courage leave him. He wracks his brain for something, anything to talk about. “Uh, Steve told us about you while we were tracking down Loki’s scepter. Not anything too specific, just how he thought you survived and what happened to you after. Why he wanted to help you. He was really worried.” He scratches his nail against the rough edge of the grass until the blade starts to peel apart. “My specialty is in gamma radiation, did you know? When I was, well, a _lot_ younger I took on a project to recreate the super soldier serum Dr Erskine invented. The serum itself isn’t that much of a mystery; it’s the reaction agent that’s the problem. Erskine used something he only referred to in his notes as ‘vitarays’. We don’t know what they were or how he produced them but the results are pretty unquestionable. I had a theory that different types of radiation would react differently to the serum. So I tried gamma.”

Bucky sits up.

“The problem is, as best as I can figure it, that gamma’s close enough to vitarays to react with the serum but not to stabilize it. That’s why mutations like the Hulk happen. There’s probably some other factors involved, too –“

“Good becomes great. I’ve heard the party line.”

Bruce held his hands up, the green smell of broken grass going along for the ride. “Yeah, nobody needs to get into my issues right now, okay? I know Hydra used something like the serum on you; do you happen to know what kind of radiation they exposed you to? I think – _fuck_.” 

He’s lost him.

It’s eerie to see the awareness fade from someone’s eyes. Bruce has some experience with it, though never anything quite like this. It’s not like a seizure or Alzheimer’s or any other medical problem Bruce can name; it’s more like Bucky’s gaze turns inward, or very far outward, and what he sees terrifies him. He doesn’t flinch when the breeze stirs some of his hair free of the messy braid and into his face.

What should Bruce do? Should he touch him? Just wait it out? Fuck. He wasn’t any good at this sort of thing. “Fuck, Bucky I’m sorry. I knew I shouldn’t have brought it up, I’m stupid, _stupid_ –“

The light bouncing off the metal arm as it moved was like a damn _solar flare_ right in Bruce’s eyes. Jeeze. If it was mostly vibranium, why did it reflect so brightly? 

Bucky finishes tucking the strands of hair behind his ear while Bruce blinks hard to try and clear the floating blue spots away. “I don’t think I can answer your question, doc. You should really talk to Shuri and her team. They did a lot of work on me when I first came here, I’m sure they already know more than I ever could. You have my permission to see my file if that’s what’s holding you up.” He tilts his head and waits for Bruce to meet his eyes, face composed and calm, no sign that anything unusual had just happened at all except... The sun must have just shifted enough to deepen the lines around his face. Shadows can do strange things sometimes. “You could have asked me that any time, though. What was so special you couldn’t bring it up in front of the others?”

Bruce tosses the mutilated bits of grass left in his hand as far as he can. No. He’s already overstepped his bounds once today, there’s no way he should even consider bringing it up now. Definitely not.

“You’re making my head hurt here, doc. Just say what you wanna say.” 

The question burning through his brain since he saw the footage of the tarmac bursts out of his mouth like a snake out of a can of peanuts, spilling all over before he can shove it back in again. “What’s it like? Being dead?”

Bucky squints at him for a moment before turning his face toward the tree line. The breeze shifts their branches, the quiet _shush-shush_ ing sound almost inaudible over Bruce’s pounding heart. He swallows and forces himself to listen. _Shush shush. Shhh_.

“Like a **dark** room.” Bucky’s voice is soft and oddly soothing, little more than a whisper on the wind. “It’s like your eyes are open but you can’t see anything. Sounds _echo_ off the walls except there aren’t any walls, just _echoes_. Like the whole world is hidden with the light and everything will make sense if you can just find a match.”

Bruce breathes and watches the trees move back and forth. A bird hops from one branch to another, a burst of color in all the green. “I have a lot of experience with dying. But none with actual death. I don’t know if I ever will.”

“I’ve done both. I don’t recommend either really, though one is usually less messy than the other. Then again, who’s to say? I like to imagine everyone’s different in the **dark**.”

The bird hops to the next branch, and the next, its yellow tail bobbing up and down as it goes.

“I know you’ve tried before. Almost everything at one point or another, right? To test the hypothesis? Me, too. I almost got beheaded once. Machete, right through here.” Bruce tears his eyes away from the trees at the flash of sun-on-metal between Bucky’s chin and collarbone; it’s a devastating angle. “Severed the vein, I think. Was so bone dry I couldn’t even blink. Dragged me down into the heat.” He looks up into the sky, squinting hard against the glare. “Don’t try it that way, Doctor. You won’t like staring out of your eyes.” 

Bruce rubs his hands together, chilled all over despite the sun. “Thanks for the warning. I don’t think the other guy would let me go through with it all the way, though.” 

“Mm. It’s good that he looks out for you like that.” Bucky flops back down onto the grass and stretches like a giant housecat until the tension vanishes from his shoulders like it never existed. One corner of his mouth quirks up. “Big guys are always better when they’ve got someone small to love.” 

And this conversation’s officially taken a turn. Bruce takes a deep breath and bites down on the irritation gnawing up his throat. “Look, I know where you’re coming from here but it’s not the same thing. Hulk doesn’t love me. If anything he hates me. Always has, always will.” And why was Bucky defending _him_? After the stunt the other guy pulled during the battle and all the crap that happened on Sakaar? Even if he showed up when Tony and the aliens crash landed on top of them that didn’t mean all was forgiven. Whatever else Hulk might be at his heart he’s still the physical manifestation of Bruce’s fucked up id. His terrible brain erupting its way through his bones.

“Puny Banner.” 

It takes him a minute to realize the words are said out loud and not just inside his own head. It’s the strangest and most familiar thing he’s ever heard.

Bucky smiles softly at him. His right thumb rubs at his left. _Shhh._ “Who do you think it was taking all the blows? Daddy couldn’t know, so neither could you. He’s loved you longer than he’s been alive.” 

“What… How do you know about that?”

Bucky rolls to his feet in one smooth motion. Bruce takes the hand up offered without thinking. “I’ve answered two of your questions today, doc. That’s one more than people usually get. Come on; let’s see if Steve and the others are done yet.”

He refuses to say anything else the entire walk back to the palace, no matter how much Bruce badgers him to.

It takes years for the Allies to think him harmless enough to forgo the constant monitoring and questioning of his activities. Of course, the guards they'd provided to oversee his professional work have long since seen the error in the American way of thinking. The seeds of a new Hydra had already been in place before Arnim had anything to do with them.

At any rate, his twilight years are his to do with as he pleases. There are many projects worthy of his attention but none more satisfying than the original. It is infinitely more pleasant to work on now that the subject’s been taught some proper manners; he must grudgingly admit the team before him did good work. 

He’s prodding at the arm attachment site with some of Stark’s new equipment when the subject turns his head and blinks groggily at him. "Want to know a secret?”

Though it seems nothing can stop _that mouth_ from running. And oh, how they’ve tried. Arnim has even briefly considered removing the possibility of speech altogether a few years ago, but that particular… _peculiarity_ of the subject’s has an infuriating way of actually being useful. So now he’s forced to grimace and resume his work as the secretary hovering over his shoulder takes notes.

The subject flinches as the tool digs in but even that isn’t enough to shut him up. “The tesseract never killed anybody, you know. Just moved ‘em is all. Your shiny guns and weapons opened a door and spat those poor bastards out somewhere else. One hell of a trip.”

The instruments fall still in Arnim’s hands. 

“You can still see the ~~paths~~ they took, if you look close enough. I can’t really blame it, though – it’s just a shiny rock. Not its fault they didn’t all make it in one piece. Or where it left the one that did. Serves him right, really, if you ask me. The bombs on that ship would've done the same to the whole world. Twisted it up and spit it out. If Steve hadn't. Hadn’t.”

The subject’s eyes are a brilliant blue. They fill with tears Arnim hasn’t seen in decades. Then he shifts in the restraints and smiles, a grin Arnim finds infuratingly familiar.

"It also gave _you_ cancer, so I guess I can’t really be mad about what it did to me, can I?"

(please come get me please please come get me please come and get me come and get me please please _please_ )

Steve’s born on the Fourth of July, a day of celebration that soaks into the very marrow of his bones, especially his temper. Like sulfur in the summer; all gunpowder and flash sticking to the back of your throat. Like fireworks

– combustible – if you’re stupid enough to try holding it in your hand you’re likely to lose a finger or two. 

– loud – a bang you feel in your heart and your chest and your feet, making you jump even though you know it’s coming. 

– and when it finally reaches its peak in the sky, good god is it beautiful.

Loving Steve is like waking up with the phantom smell of smoke in your clothes the morning after. Loving Steve is like the afterimage of the sparks when you close your eyes against the brightness. Loving Steve is like the memory of fire in the sky after **darkness** has stolen away the light.

It’s no wonder Bucky falls for him, and falls hard, even back before he knew what love really was. He remembers perfectly the moment he knew Steve was his forever (the boardwalk rough beneath their hands, fireworks setting the night sky ablaze, all the colors in the world lighting up Steve’s pale cheeks) and he treasures it, so grateful it survived the warzone of his mind when so much else didn’t. It’s a perfect moment, one he wouldn’t mind reliving every day for the rest of his life. No matter how long that turns out to be.

Bucky’s cutting up some fruit for a snack when he hears Steve in the hallway outside their guest quarters. He puts the knife in the sink and walks as far away from it as the kitchen will let him.

He can tell by the way Steve’s jaw is clenched that he was right to assume a confrontation was heading his way. Steve takes in the way Bucky’s hands are pressed flat on the counter and slumps against the doorway. “I don’t want to fight you, Bucky.”

“You love fighting with me, don’t change the subject. How’d the meeting go? You figure out what was bothering you?”

His face crumbles a little before he can force all the emotions back down again. Bucky’s heart aches in his chest; Steve shouldn’t have to hide like that. Not here.

Steve’s voice is soft but solid, with just a hint of the pain Bucky knows is simmering below the surface. “Why didn’t you ever tell me, Bucky? All this time. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

The list of things Steve could be talking about is endless but Bucky’s not stupid enough to not know exactly what he means. His mouth opens and closes so many times he’s sure he looks like a fish that just discovered land. For all that he’s imagined this conversation over the years he still has no idea what to say. “I… I didn’t want to believe it myself, at first. Then I didn’t know how to talk about it. Still don’t, really.” He covers his metal hand with the right one, thumbnail sliding into the tiny space between the segments at his wrist. “Kind of thought you already knew, to be honest.”

“I don’t know what I knew.” Steve wipes a hand across his mouth and paces the three steps to the end of the counter and back again.

Bucky tries smiling. He can’t look up at Steve to verify how convincing it is, though. “Then maybe I just hoped you knew. It’s not like I’m psychic.”

“You sure in the hell are _something_ , Bucky!”

He counts a full forty-two seconds of silence before Steve’s hand slides across the counter to cover his own. The metal one refuses to budge, so Steve cradles the right one between both of his, rubbing in a little warmth. The calluses on his palm catch a little against the ones on Bucky’s trigger finger.

“I need you to explain it to me, Bucky. Did you know what would happen back then? That we’d end up here, of all places? Bucky. _Tell me_.”

Steve’s way of asking is so much worse than Hydra’s. It gets him right in the heart and the throat, right in the soft places where the truth hides behind his teeth. But he doesn’t know what the truth _is_ , let alone what version of it Steve might want to hear.

“I didn’t know… for _sure_. I just…”

When it’s clear words have deserted him, Steve shifts his grip to one hand so he can cup Bucky’s cheek with the other. The tips of his fingers just barely caressing the fall of hair over his ears. “Why didn’t you _say something?_ I could have stopped them, Bucky. I could have stopped _everything_. I could have _saved_ you.”

“You did save me. When it mattered, you saved me.”

“But not soon enough. I wish… I’m so sorry, Bucky. You were hurting all that time and I didn’t do anything about it.”

“What would you have done, Steve? If you knew what was going to happen, if I drew you a fucking _map_ , what would you have done? There’s so many possibilities. I – I can’t see them all, can’t figure the math to make it fit right without fucking everything up. How do you know something worse wouldn’t have happened? You think you can just pick and choose your destiny? _Fuck_. Nothing would have changed. Nothing _could_ have changed. Don’t you think I _tried?_ ”

“I know you did.” Both of Steve’s hands are on his face now. The counter presses into Bucky’s belly from where his knees have gone a little weak. “I know you did. But you’re not alone now, Bucky. We can fix this together. You’ve just got to let me help.”

Clarity. Sudden and sure.

“No.”

_No._

WS-FILE 3976 K. TRANSCRIBED FROM RECORDINGS RECOVERED FROM BASE 426, AUSTRIA

(cont.) references vita rays in his notes, though we have yet to find the specific amount and type of radiation he subjected his subjects to. 

[inaudible] [postulate: coughing by Unknown Male, presumably WS Subject 1]

AZ: It is no matter. We have other means of propelling the experiment. Something better.

JS: You try my patience, Doctor. When you asked for use of the tesseract I assumed it was for your weapons research. And now I find you wasting time on this?

AZ: With all due respect, Herr Schmidt –

JS: This war already has a superior soldier, Doctor. We do not need another. And cannon fodder is easy enough to find if you know where to look.

AZ: Yes, sir. You are, of course, correct. ( . . . ) But this could make them so much easier to control, yes?

[ _faint buzzing rises in pitch_ ]

JS: Perhaps. Get on with it, Doctor.

[ _series of metallic clanging and machine noises_ ]

[ _Unknown Male begins screaming_ ]

[ _buzzing rises to crescendo pitch_ ] [ _recording hisses into inaudibility for 1m 37s_ ] [ _Unknown Male stops screaming during this period_ ]

[ _buzzing fades_ ] [ _audibility is restored_ ] [ _machine noises slow to a stop_ ]

[silence for 43s]

[ _metallic clatter_ ]

JS: Ah, well. It is not every man that can survive exposure to the power cosmic, eh Doctor? Now that your little experiment is over I suggest you continue work on what I hired you for in the first place. I would hate to be disappointed again. [ _voice grows fainter, JS presumably moving away from microphone_ ]

[ _door closes_ ]

[ _louder metallic clatter_ ] [postulate: instruments being tossed onto tray]

[silence for 2m 15s]

[ _long audible gasp_ ]

AZ: Shit! 

Unknown Male: [inaudible] sergeant 3 2 [inaudible] 7 [inaudible] 

AZ: Remarkable.

[end of recording]

“No? What do you mean _no_?”

Bucky takes a step back. His left hand stays firmly planted on the counter. Steve’s hands hold nothing but air.

“You can’t fix this. This is something you have to accept.”

“But. _Bucky_.” Now Steve looks like a fish on a line. “I can’t just _ignore this_. I refuse to stand idly by while someone I love suffers. I can’t. It’s not in me, Buck.”

 _Oh, Stevie_. Bucky’s heart aches again. “I know, baby, I know. Believe me, you are helping. _You are_. Every day I get to wake up and see your face helps.” He presses a kiss to Steve’s damp forehead before letting their heads thump together. They breathe the same air for awhile. “Every day with you is the best possible day for me, Steve. I need you to trust me and let it go.”

Steve huffs out a laugh and grabs Bucky by the back of the neck. “I’ve never been very good at that.”

“I know. A regular Elsa, you are not. Despite all the ice.”

He laughs again, soggily, and a wave of triumph rolls through Bucky. “There it is. There’s your smile. That’s all I need to be happy, right there. For as long as you’ll let me have it.”

“I’ll always let you. To the end of the line, remember?”

Right. To the end of the line.

Bucky knows this isn’t the last they’ll talk about this; Steve’s worse than a dog with a bone when he finds something he wants to change about the world. But for now… for now, he has a reprieve. 

There are dozens of tiny fissures running through the countertop by the time Steve pulls him into the bedroom. Bucky will have to apologize to T’Challa for it later. 

 

(he’s not supposed to have it, is the thing he doesn’t dare say)

(he’s never loved himself nearly as much as he’s loved Steve - but a deal’s a deal - and he’s selfish enough to take what he can get)

“Never talk about this. Do you hear me? No one ever knows what happened up on that hill today. If there’s something that needs to be dealt with then _I will deal with it_. None of you are ever to speak of this again. Not to Bucky, not to command, not to your wives at home thirty years from now. It _never happened_. That’s an order from your captain.”

“It’s okay, Stevie. You and Carter, I mean. It’s okay. I don’t blame you for wanting someone else for after all this is over with. Even if by some miracle I make it home again it’s never going to be the same.” Bucky knows deep in his gut, in his marrow, that there’s no coming back from this. That this war is going to eat him alive. He just doesn’t know how to make _Steve_ understand it.

“Who says I want it to be the same? I’m not giving up hope for _happy_ ; who cares what shape it takes so long as we get it? And Peggy likes you just fine; you two just need to get comfortable with each other.” Steve takes his hand right there on the street. Bucky can’t help but glance around; fortunately the blackout means the only other people around are up to no good themselves and don’t give a damn what two American G.I.s are doing. The gesture makes heat rise up to his ears, anyway. “And enough of that kind of talk. I don’t like to hear you sound so defeated. You’ll make it through, Bucky. I swear on everything I’ve got. Home for me is wherever you are, no matter what it looks like on the other side. We can always make a new home together if we need to.”

“Ugh. You are one sappy little asshole.” Bucky bumps him off the sidewalk into the gutter, careful not to let go of his hand or push too hard. He’s got to tread softly even with Steve’s new bulk; it’s like Bucky doesn’t know his own strength lately. “You talk to all your dates like that?”

The white of Steve’s smile is as bright as the moon above. “Nah, I save my good lines for the pretty ones. Which is why you hardly ever hear ‘em, jerk.”

 

(it’s true, though – god, does he ever know it’s true – the one thing that’s never changed in all the hearts of the world is how much he loves that man – it’s the warm pulse at the heart of him)

 

“I’ve built my life around it, you know. The solidness of you.”

Steve’s frowning face. Frowning. 

“Bucky?”

Ricochet, reset.

His name, _echoing_ , over

apartment halls and

ravine walls and 

bridge brawls and

infinite falls and

The thing with _echoes_ is that they get larger and louder until eventually they just fade away.

He doesn’t see the shot that takes him out. But he does hear the Jabari soldier next to him shout out a warning. Too late.

 

Then, like always, there’s **darkness**. And threaded in between the **darkness** there’s so much blue it hurts. 

But today there’s something different. The **darkness** has never felt _aware_ before. Never _expecting_. Never like the whole of life has closed its eyes and held its breath with you.

The Lady asks you a **question**. 

This time, you dare to ask one in return.

 

( _answer me_ – why me? – i’m nobody special, i don’t have any powers – hell, i’m not even _me_ anymore – i’m just some stupid kid that’s lived past his time – _so why me?_ )

The Lady looks at him. In the blue light her skin is the color of mint growing in his mother’s windowsill.

She speaks. 

**((The strong man who has known power all his life, may lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.))**

Her words _echo_ through the **darkness**. He shivers, not knowing why.

((You’ve spent so long with a piece of this power nestled inside you. It’s true that there are others better suited than you. Wiser. Stronger.))

 

Thor arrives in a storm of lightning and rainbow-hued fire, burning a hole right through the center of the battle. It’s _awesome_ , in every sense of the word. But the space dogs are fast and vicious, and they recover quicker than Bucky does. Two of them jump on his back. 

It’s hard to notice anything other than the pain ripping through his insides but Bucky’s had plenty of practice at it over the years. He sees Steve and Thor head toward the trees. His arm tingles in a strangely soft way, separate to the **darkness** stealing his sight. 

 

Back with the Lady again. 

((There are others who can. But only one who will. And that one cannot be allowed to.))

(please – don’t make me – i don’t want to)

((And that is why you should. If you say yes then you will continue in the cycle until the last light of the cosmos burns away. If you say no then this is your end. The pain will stop for you here and you will cease to be. The stones are powerful enough to make this happen. You can choose this ending.))

There it is: _choice_ , again. Why is he the only one in the universe that gets to choose? It seems like he always just makes the same mistakes over and over again. 

((We understand how you’ve suffered. We’ve suffered, too. One way or the other, this choice is forever. **To the end of the line.** ))

The _echo_ shimmers through the light, like fire in the sky, painting a thin face in color.

((But know that it’s the end for so much more, too.))

Fire in the sky. Little Stevie, hustling every damn day just to do what’s right.

 

When he opens his eyes the world is screams and howls and crying and anger and blood and terror and war. Endless fucking war.

He can’t see Steve anymore. 

Bucky picks up his gun and works his way through the battle to find him.

 

Ricochet, reset.

 _Someone else could_ … He doesn’t think he could live with himself if he left this burden behind for someone else to pick up. Even posthumously speaking. But – forever? Truly, forever?

He can already feel the edges of the **darkness** peeling back. They don’t have the luxury of time.

He stares down at his mismatched hands. He’s only ever had one thing to give, only just the well of himself to offer up. To war. To the fight. To time.

There have been a lot of moments that made it nice, though. One or two that even made it worth it. And the Lady _had_ given him a choice – _him_ , of all people. He’s already had so much time to think, and dance, and sit quietly knowing Steve was alive and healthy somewhere far away. He owes the universe for that, if nothing else. 

((Power requires sacrifice.))

(( _Please, Bucky._ )) 

 

Something’s not right.

His arm. 

 

His knees give out just as he finds Steve in the clearing.

 

 

 

b u c k y  
f a l l s

 

 

 

The Lady catches him. He can feel her trying to hold him together as his body collapses, crumbling around itself even here in the **dark** of this not-place. There are tears on her cheeks and running down her nose.

He’s never thought of her as human before, not with the green skin and confident grace as she moved. But the look in her eyes is the most human thing he’s ever seen.

(( _Please, Bucky_. You know love. You know what it can be. What he did to me, how he did it – that’s not love. _It’s not love_. Don’t let the new world be built on that. Don’t let what he did become right.))

She touches his face. A shiver of color across his vision. _Gold._

((Please. Don’t let him win.))

_gold_

 

 

 

f a l  
l i n g 

 

a p  
a r t

 

 

 

 

_ (what is a soul anyway?) _

The Lady asks you a **question**.

(they’re just stones – just chunks of rock)

Once  
The universe was new

“Bucky?”

This wing of the palace is a mess; Steve has to dodge medics and nurses as he searches, the cries of the wounded set up in triage raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Wanda and Shuri have Vision hidden away in one of the rooms somewhere, making sure he’s stabilized and functioning as well as he can be. He seemed alright when Wanda carried him in from the battlefield but she was clearly still worried. Steve knows how she feels.

He finds Bucky pacing in another quiet room off the main hall, his back to the window and the fires being set just beyond it. There’s a look in Bucky’s eyes, a blue look Steve hasn’t seen in years. His perfect heart skips a beat. _No. Oh, Bucky no_.

“Bucky! Bucky, are you hurt?”

Bucky doesn’t seem to hear him, though Steve’s caterwauling loud enough to wake the dead. The doctors frown at him but he doesn’t care; his thoughts are spinning too fast to focus on anything except the man in front of him. They never should have separated out there. He should have kept Bucky _with him_ –

Bucky jerks when Steve grabs him, left hand a blur reaching for Steve’s neck. Steve shuts his eyes and braces for impact. He waits. And waits.

“Steve?” The hand lands heavily on his collarbone, the metal cool and smooth, and Steve can’t keep himself from sagging under the weight. He presses the wrist against his neck just to feel the mechanical pulse of it. Was the new arm sensitive enough to read Steve’s racing heartbeat? Hell, the Dora Milaje stationed at the door could probably hear it pounding in his veins, he’s sure Bucky doesn’t have any problem picking it up.

“Yeah, Buck. It’s me. Christ, I thought something happened to you. When they said they took you to the medical wing I thought the worst.” The Jabari leader had actually said Bucky was _dead_. Steve had punched him in the face, which in hindsight had been a bad reaction to have. He hopes he didn’t hurt him too badly. The man had tried to be kind about it, in his own way, but the blood had been pounding in Steve’s ears and he just couldn’t _think straight_. Bucky couldn’t be dead. 

And he’s not; thank god and all the angels. But…

Bucky’s eyes flit around Steve’s face and beyond, not settling on any feature in particular, and for a small stricken second he thinks Bucky might be _blind_ –

(His eyes are the brightest thing Steve’s ever seen. Brighter than the sun on arctic snow. Brighter than portals in the sky.)

– then Bucky’s blinking away tears and falling into Steve’s arms, and everything’s right with the world after all. 

This time Steve barely notices Bucky’s weight; he could do this all day. Steve holds him for a long time, even after the sobs have quieted, whispering nonsense words of comfort in his ear and letting Bucky’s tears soak into the neck of his uniform. 

It’s quiet in this part of the hall. The medics have all moved into the next room, though whether it’s to give them a little privacy or because there’s no one left to tend to Steve doesn’t care. Bucky is safe and in his arms. The world can wait until later for once.

Bucky sniffs and steps back, rubbing at the puffiness under his eyes. There’s snot dripping out of his nose and his hair’s one big tangle. But despite all that he’s beautiful, always will be to Steve no matter what. He opens his mouth to tell him so but what comes out instead is: “You look like shit, Barnes.”

Bucky’s snorted laughter is brief but the lopsided smile lingers longer, so it turns out his mouth knows better than his heart. A wave of satisfaction settles over Steve as he watches Bucky wipe his nose with the back of his sleeve and feel around in his pockets for a proper handkerchief. He should probably let go completely so Bucky has both hands to pull himself together but Bucky seems to be doing just fine with the one and Steve could use a little comfort himself. 

It’s very calming to rub his thumb back and forth across the ridges and planes of Bucky’s hand. He can finally see the appeal of the little worry stone Wanda keeps in her pocket. Steve never got the luxury of touching the first one like this; he’s glad, in a vaguely shameful kind of way, that he can give all his love and attention to this new arm, a tool created just for Bucky with his needs in mind. 

The matte surface is smooth as velvet under Steve’s fingers except for a few odd patches along the knuckles that are a little pitted and rough. He shifts his grip to hold the hand up to the light. There’s discoloration in the metal, each knuckle tarnished a slightly different shade. Steve rubs his thumb over a patch of gold on the back of Bucky’s hand – it’s warm, the edges raised just a tiny bit above the rest.

It’s hard to look away from now that Steve’s seen it. “Is this damage from the battle?”

“Hmm?” Bucky’s voice is soft, distracted, a peculiar absent tone Steve’s going to grow very familiar with over the next little while. “Oh, uh. No, not. Not exactly. More like an… impromptu modification on a previous design.”

“Sounds fancy.” Steve raises his eyebrow. Usually when Bucky talks smooth it’s because he’s trying to cover up something. “It’s not bothering you, is it? You should have Shuri look at it.” 

The texture of those spots is – it’s really – fuck, it’s practically mesmerizing.

“Shuri’s seen enough of me lately. I figured this one out on my own.”

“Really?” Bucky always was interested in the latest gadgets and gizmos, swinging by the stores on Sixth Avenue to window-gaze at all the new stock. Hell, he got a second job at the World’s Fair back in ’39 just so he could hang out in the exhibits a little bit longer. Steve’s not really surprised he’s taken a – _ahem_ – hand in the workings of his own prosthetic now that he has the chance. He just never anticipated it would take such an… aesthetic turn.

He angles the wrist so the light caresses the surface like a prism. It’s lovely and oddly familiar, though Steve can’t for the life of him remember where he’s seen it before. He brushes his lips softly – ever so softly – against the blue sheen of the middle knuckle. It’s nice to see Bucky take pride in his appearance again. “I like it. Does it do anything special?” 

 

(somewhere in the universe a Lady watches over a soul)  
(somewhere closer a Collector counts his shrinking hoard for that one missing piece)   
(somewhere closer a sorcerer counts the seconds down, tick tick ticking)   
(somewhere closer a man that isn’t a man fills the empty space in his mind with love)   
(somewhere closer still Bucky counts the molecules in Steve’s breath as he ghosts a kiss over infinity) 

(it’s a good day, somewhere out there)

Bucky pulls his hand gently from Steve’s, smiling the same crooked smile Steve’s been blinded by since 1937. His eyes are shiny and Steve can’t name the color. 

“Nothing you need to worry about now, Stevie. You leave everything to me.”

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow  
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,  
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only  
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,  
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,  
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only  
There is shadow under this red rock,  
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),  
And I will show you something different from either  
Your shadow at morning striding behind you  
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;  
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.  
\- [“The Wasteland” – TS Eliot](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land)

**Author's Note:**

> [The Art Masterpost.](https://diurnaldaysart.tumblr.com/post/178771442160/a-heap-of-broken-images) Swing by to show some love and to view the art in glorious detail.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at [snarklyboojum.](http://snarklyboojum.tumblr.com/)


End file.
